xplanation he slipped the end of a rope
about her waist, tying it in a hard knot. Until now she had not even
known that he had brought a rope; now she wondered just how hazardous
was the hidden trail which they were travelling; if it were in truth
but the matter of half a dozen feet which she would fall if she
slipped? He made the other end of the short tether fast about his own
body, said "Ready?" and again she followed him closely.

There came little flat spaces, then broken boulders to clamber over,
then steep, rugged climbs, when they grasped the rough rocks with both
hands and moved on with painful slowness. It seemed to the girl that
they had been climbing for long, tedious hours since they had slipped
out of their saddles; though to him she said nothing, locking her lips
stubbornly, she knew that at last she was tired, very tired, that an
end of this laborious ascent must come soon or she would be forced to
stop and lie down and rest.

"Fifteen minutes more," said the sheriff, "and we're there. We'll use
the first five minutes of it for a rest, too."

He made her sit down, unstoppered a canteen which, like the coil of
rope, she had not known he carried, and gave her a drink of water which
seemed to her the most wonderfully strength-making, life-giving draft
in the world. Then he dropped down at her side, looked at his watch in
the light of a flaring match carefully cupped in his hand, and lighted
his pipe.

"Nearly midnight," he told her.

Without replying she lay back against the slope of the mountain, closed
her eyes and relaxed, breathing deeply. Her chest expanded deeply to
the long indrawn breath which filled her lungs with the rare air. She
felt suddenly a little sleepy, dreaming longingly of the unutterable
content one could find in just going to sleep with the cliff-scarred
mountainside for couch.

She stirred and opened her eyes. Rod Norton, the sheriff of San Juan,
a man who a few brief hours ago had been unknown to her, his name
unfamiliar, sat two paces from her, smoking. She and this man of whom
she still knew rather less than nothing were alone in the world; just
the two of them lifted into the sky, separated by a dreary stretch of
desert lands from other men and women . . . bound together by a bit of
rope. She tried to see his face; the profile, more guessed than seen,
appeared to her fancy as unrelenting as the line of cliff just beyond
him, clear-cut against the sky.

Yet someh