's bedroom. It was small, with a soldier's
cot of exaggerated size that must have been built for his amplitude of
person, and it was bare of ornament except for an old ivory crucifix.

"There's a pitcher and basin, if you incline to a limited operation for
outward convention," said Jasper Ewold; "and through that door you will
find a shower, if you are for frank, unlimited submersion of the
altogether."

"Have I time for the altogether?" Jack asked.

"When youth has not in this house, it marks a retrocession toward
barbarism for Little Rivers which I refuse to contemplate. Take your
shower, Sir Chaps, and"--a smile went weaving over the hills and valleys
of Jasper Ewold's face--"and, mind, you take off those grand boots or
they will get full of water! You will find me in the library when you are
through;" and, shaking with subterranean enjoyment of his own joke, he
closed the door.

Cool water from the bowels of the mountains fell on a figure as slender
as that of the great Michael's David pictured in the living-room; a
figure whose muscles ran rippling with leanness and suppleness, without
the bunching over-development of the athlete. He bubbled in shivery
delight with the first frigid sting of the downpour; he laughed in
ecstasy as he pulled the valve wide open, inviting a Niagara.

While he was still glowing with the rough intimacy of the towel, he
viewed the trappings thrown over the chair and his revolver holster on
the bureau in a sense of detachment, as if in the surroundings of
civilization some voice of civilization made him wish for flannels in
which to dine. Then there came a rap at the door, and an Indian appeared
with an envelope addressed in feminine handwriting. On the corner of the
page within was a palm-tree--a crest to which anybody who dwelt on the
desert might be entitled; and Jack read:

"DEAR MR. WINGFIELD:

"Please don't tell father about that horrible business on the pass. It
will worry him unnecessarily and might interfere with my afternoon rides,
which are everything to me. There is not the slightest danger in the
future. After this I shall always go armed.

"Sincerely yours,

"MARY EWOLD."

The shower had put him in such lively humor that his answer was born in a
flash from memory of her own catechising of him on Galeria.

"First, I must ask if you know how to shoot," he scribbled beneath her
signature.

The Indian seemed hardly out of the doorway before he was back
with a repl