fe to come here in my own name. I didn't care about the safety, but I
wanted to see the situation exactly as it was. I didn't know who you
were when I came here. I took you to be Miss Maria Yuste. I----"

"My name is Maria Yuste Valencia Valdes," the young woman explained
proudly. "When, may I ask, did you discover who I was?"

"I guessed it at Antelope Springs."

"Then why did you not tell me then who you are? Surely that was the time
to tell me. My deception did you no harm; yours was one no man of honor
could have endured after he knew who I was."

"I didn't aim to keep it up very long. I meant, in a day or two----"

"A day or two," she cried, in a blaze of scorn. "After you had found out
all I had to tell; after you had got evidence to back your robber-claim;
after you had made me breathe the same air so long with a spy?"

Her face was very white; but she faced him in her erect slimness, with
her dark eyes fixed steadily on him.

"You ain't quite fair to me; but let that pass for the present. When I
asked you about the grants didn't you guess who I was? Play square with
me. Didn't you have a notion?"

A flood of spreading color swept back into her face.

"No, I didn't. I thought perhaps you were an agent of the claimant; but
I didn't know you were passing under a false name, that you were aware
in whose house you were staying. I thought you an honest man, on the
wrong side--nothing so contemptible as a spy."

"That idea's fixed in your mind, is it?" he asked quietly.

"Beyond any power of yours to remove it," she flashed back.

"The facts, Senor Gordon, speak loud," put in Pesquiera derisively.

Dick Gordon paid not the least attention to him. His gaze was fastened
on the girl whose contempt was lashing him.

"Very well, Miss Valdes. Well let it go at that just now. All I've got
to say is that some day you'll hate yourself for what you have just
said."

Neither of them had raised their voices from first to last. Hers had
been low and intense, pulsing with the passion that would out. His had
held its even way.

"I hate myself now, that I have had you here so long, that I have been
the dupe of a common cheat."

"All right. 'Nough said, ma'am. More would certainly be surplusage. I'll
not trouble you any longer now. But I want you to remember that there's
a day coming when you'll travel a long way to take back all of what
you've just been saying. I want to thank you for all your kindness to
me. I'm a