answered promptly.

"Which is another way of saying that you expect me to win out."

"By advice of counsel we decline to make any admissions, sir."

"You don't have to say a word. The facts do all the talking that is
necessary." Gordon glanced in a business-like fashion over several
papers. "This would be a fine time for friend Pablo to attack me again.
Here are several of the original papers--deed of the grant, map of it
with the first survey made, letters showing that old Moreno lived
several years in the valley after your people were driven out at the
time of the change in government. By the way, here's a rather
interesting document. Like to look at it, Miss Valdes?"

He handed to her a paper done up in a blue cover after the fashion of
modern legal pleadings. Valencia glanced it over. Her eye caught at a
phrase which interested her and ran rapidly down the page.

"But--I don't understand what this means--unless----"

She looked up quickly at Gordon, an eager question in her face.

"It means what it says, though it's all wrapped up in dictionary words
the way all law papers are."

Valencia passed the document to Pesquiera. "Read that, and tell me what
you think it means, Manuel." Her face was flushed with excitement, and
in her voice there was a suggestion of tremulousness.

The Spaniard read, and as he read his eyes, too, glowed.

"It means, my cousin, that you have to do with a very knightly foe. By
this paper he relinquishes all claim, title and interest in the Moreno
grant to Valencia Valdes, who he states to be in equity the rightful
owner of same. Valencia, I congratulate you. But most of all I
congratulate Mr. Gordon. Few men have the courage to make a gift of a
half million acres of land merely because they have no moral title to
it."

"Sho! I never did want the land, anyhow. I got interested in the scrap.
That's all." The miner looked as embarrassed as if he had been caught
stealing a box of cigars.

The young woman had gone from pink to white. The voice in which she
spoke was low and unsteady.

"It's a splendid thing to do--the gift of a king. I don't know--that I
can accept it--even for the sake of my people. I know now you would be
fair to them. You wouldn't throw them out. You would give new deeds to
those who have bought land, wouldn't you?"

"How are you going to keep from accepting it, Miss Valdes? That paper is
a perfectly legal document."

She smiled faintly. "I could light a cig