s who now battened on what
he had earned.

But Mary Fortune, how else was he to meet her without envious eyes
looking on; or stealthy ears of prying women, listening at keyholes to
catch every word? And out on the desert, gliding smoothly along in the
best hired automobile in town, where better could he give expression to
those surging confidences which he was impelled against his judgment to
make? It was that same inner spirit that made all his troubles, now
urging him he knew not where. All he knew for certain was that the shy
woman-look had crept back for a moment into her eyes; and after that
the fate of empires was as nothing to the import of her smile. Did she
feel, as he felt, the mystic bond between them, the appeal of his young
man's strength; or was that smile a mask, a provocative weapon, to veil
her own thoughts while she read through his like a book? He gave it
up; but there was a way of knowing--he could call out that smile again.

The idle women of the Gunsight Hotel, sitting in their rockers on the
upper porch, were rewarded on that day for many a wasted hour. For
long months they had watched McBain's typist, with her proud way of
ignoring them all; and at last they had something to talk about.
Rimrock Jones in his best, and with a hired automobile, came gliding up
to her office; and as he went tramping in every ear on the veranda was
strained to catch his words.

"Aw, don't mind those old hens," he said after a silence, roaring it
out that all could hear. "They're going to talk anyway so let's take a
ride; and make 'em guess, for once, what I say."

There was nothing, after that, for the ladies to do but retire in the
best form they could; but as Mary Fortune came out in an auto' bonnet
with a veil and coat to match they tore her character to shreds from
behind the Venetian blinds. So that was her game--she had thrown over
McBain and was setting her cap for Rimrock Jones. And automobile
clothes! Well, if that wasn't proof that she was living down a past
the ladies would like to know. A typewriter girl, earning less that
seventy dollars a month, and with a trunk full of joy-riding clothes!

With such women about her it called for some courage for Mary Fortune
to make the plunge; but the air was still fragrant, spring was on the
wind and the ground dove crooned in his tree. She was tired, worn out
with the deadly monotony of working on day by day; and she had besides
that soul-stirring el