ould she tell just so much and no more?
There would be questions. She would be cross-examined, kindly enough
but relentlessly. And in some strange way this meeting had become a
private matter; Haig's warning was inextricably mixed with other
things that did not concern Huntington. Just what these were, and why
they were so very private, she could not quite explain to herself;
and for the moment she did not try. They were things to be thought
about later, when she could think more clearly. She knew only that
she should never be able to endure either the banter or the
disapproval of Huntington. What did Claire see in him anyhow,--the
soft and sensitive Claire, with her blue eyes and her pretty face
always upturned so trustfully to him? For the first time she realized
that she had distrusted Seth from the beginning.

In the midst of these confused and disconcerting thoughts, she became
aware that she was no longer alone in the highway. Slowly as she rode,
she was steadily overtaking a group of horsemen that appeared to be in
difficulties. At intervals there was a commotion in the group, and
clouds of dust from time to time concealed it from her sight. She
reined up Tuesday, and hesitated, having had her fill of adventure for
one day. Then, as the men seemed to be quite oblivious to her
presence, and deeply absorbed in their own affair, curiosity drew her
onward; and all her scruples were forgotten when she had ridden near
enough to see the cause of the disturbance.

Three men on cow ponies were leading, driving, and avoiding a fourth
horse, which was not a cow pony by any possible extension of the
word. This horse, which wore neither saddle nor bridle, but only a
rope around his neck, maintained an almost uninterrupted struggle with
his guards. At the first near glimpse she caught of him through the
dust, Marion uttered an exclamation of surprise and admiration. He was
larger than the ponies ridden by the men, larger than any cow pony,
yet not a big horse measured by any standard with which she was
familiar. His lines were like those of a thoroughbred, and in his
movements, for all his fury, there was a lightness, a daintiness, an
eloquence that suggested nothing so much as the airy grace of a young
girl skipping and dancing across a playground.

But it was his color especially that drew the cry from Marion's lips.
This was pale yellow, not the cream color of the familiar buckskin
breed, but something golden; of a brill