provisions and a cargo of tools. He paid cash for his purchases and
answered no question beyond saying that he knew his own business. No
one knew or could guess where he had got his money--except Miss
Fortune, and she would not tell. From the very first she had told
herself that the loan was nothing to hide, and yet she was too much of
a woman not to have read aright the beacon in Rimrock's eyes. He had
spoken impulsively, and so had she; and they had parted, as it turned
out, for months.

[Illustration: Rimrock Jones left town with four burro-loads of powder,
some provisions and a cargo of tools]

The dove that had crooned so long in the umbrella tree built a nest
there and cooed on to his mate. The clear, rainless winter gave place
to spring and the giant cactus burst into flower. It rained, short and
hard, and the desert floor took on suddenly a fine mat of green; and
still he did not come. He was like the rain, this wild man of the
desert; swift and fierce, then gone and forgotten. Once she saw his
Mexican, the old, bearded Juan, with his string of shaggy burros at the
store; but he brought her no word and went off the next day with more
powder and provisions in his packs.

It was all new to Mary Fortune, this stern and barren country; and its
people were new to her, too. The women, for some reason, had regarded
her with suspicion and her answer was a patrician aloofness and
reserve. When the day's work was done she took off her headband and
sat reading in the lobby, alone. As for the men of the hotel, the
susceptible young mining men who passed to and fro from Gunsight, they
found her pleasant, but not quite what they had expected--not quite
what Dame Rumor had painted her. They watched her from the distance,
for she was undeniably goodlooking--and so did the women upstairs.
They watched, and they listened, which was not the least of the reasons
why Mary Fortune laid her ear-'phone aside. No person can enjoy the
intimacies of life when they are shouted, ill-advisedly, to the world.

But if when she first came to town, worn and tired from her journey,
she had seemed more deaf than she was, Mary Fortune had learned, as her
hearing improved, to artfully conceal the fact. There was a certain
advantage, in that unfriendly atmosphere, in being able to overhear
chance remarks. But no permanent happiness can come from small talk,
and listening to petty asides; and, for better or worse, Mary took off
her