e turned blue
with shadows. Then, catching the glimmer of a light on a hillside, he
turned toward it to put up for the night.

In answer to his call a big man with a lantern came to the door and
raised his light until it shone on a red, bald head and a portly figure.
His welcome was neither hearty nor cold; hospitality is expected in the
mountain-desert. So Nash put up his horse in the shed and came back to
the house.

The meal was half over, but two girls immediately set a plate heaped
with fried potatoes and bacon and flanked by a mighty cup of jetblack
coffee on one side and a pile of yellow biscuits on the other. He nodded
to them, grunted by way of expressing thanks, and sat down to eat.

Beside the tall father and the rosy-faced mother, the family consisted
of the two girls, one of them with her hair twisted severely close to
her head, wearing a man's blue cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled up
to a pair of brown elbows. Evidently she was the boy of the family and
to her fell the duty of performing the innumerable chores of the ranch,
for her hands were thick with work and the tips of the fingers blunted.
Also she had that calm, self-satisfied eye which belongs to the
workingman who knows that he has earned his meal.

Her sister monopolized all the beauty and the grace, not that she was
either very pretty or extremely graceful, but she was instinct with the
challenge of femininity like a rare scent. It lingered about her, it
enveloped her ways; it gave a light to her eyes and made her smile
exquisite. Her clothes were not of much finer material than her
sister's, but they were cut to fit, and a bow of crimson ribbon at her
throat was as effective in that environment as the most costly orchids
on an evening gown.

She was armed in pride this night, talking only to her mother, and then
in monosyllables alone. At first it occurred to Steve that his coming
had made her self-conscious, but he soon discovered that her pride was
directed at the third man at the table. She at least maintained a
pretence of eating, but he made not even a sham, sitting miserably, his
mouth hard set, his eyes shadowed by a tremendous frown. At length he
shoved back his chair with such violence that the table trembled.

"Well," he rumbled, "I guess this lets me out. S'long."

And he strode heavily from the room; a moment later his cursing came
back to them as he rode into the night.

"Takes it kind of hard, don't he?" said the fathe