youth peculiarly emphasized by its
restrained emotion.

Now the easy traveller took stock of his immediate surroundings, which
had interested him only as a foothold and vantage-point for the panorama
that he had been breathing in. Here, of all conceivable places, he was in
danger of becoming eavesdropper to a conversation which was evidently
very personal. Rounding the escarpment at his elbow he saw, on a shelf of
decaying granite, two waiting ponies. One had a Mexican saddle of the
cowboy type. The other had an Eastern side-saddle, which struck him as
exotic in a land where women mostly ride astride. And what woman,
whatever style of riding she chose, should care to come to this pass?

Judging by the direction from which the voices came, the speakers were
hidden by still another turn in the defile. A few more steps brought eye
as well as ear back to the living world with the sight of a girl seated
on a bowlder. He could see nothing of her face except the cheek, which
was brown, and the tip of a chin, which he guessed was oval, and her
hair, which was dark under her hatbrim and shimmering with gold where it
was kissed by the rays of the sun. An impression as swift as a flash of
light could not exclude inevitable curiosity as to the full face; a
curiosity emphasized by the poised erectness of her slender figure.

The man was bending over her in a familiar way. He was thirty, perhaps,
in the prime of physical vigor, square-jawed, cocksure, a six-shooter
slung at his hip. Though she was not giving way before him, her attitude,
in its steadiness, reflected distress in a bowstrung tremulousness.
Suddenly, at something he said which the easy traveller could not quite
understand, she sprang up aflame, her hand flying back against the rock
wall behind her for support. Then the man spoke so loud that he was
distinctly audible.

"When you get mad like that you're prettier'n ever," he said.

It was a peculiar situation. It seemed incredible, melodramatic, unreal,
in sight of the crawling freight train far out on the levels.

"Aren't you overplaying your part, sir?" the easy traveller asked.

The man's hand flew to his six-shooter, while the girl looked around in
swift and eager impulse to the interrupting voice. Its owner, the color
scheme of his attire emphasized by the glare of the low sun, expressed in
his pose and the inquiring flicker of a smile purely the element of the
casual. Far from making any movement toward his