ally, I don't do any promisin'. But when I do--that
promise is goin' to be kept. If you ain't likin' my company, ma'am, why,
I reckon there's a heap of trail ahead. An' I ain't afraid of gettin'
lost."

"Isn't that remarkable!" she jeered.

He looked at her with sober eyes. "If we're figurin' on hittin' the
Rancho Seco before night we'll have to quit our gassin' an' do some
travelin'," he advised. "Accordin' to the figures we've got about forty
miles to ride, altogether. We've come about fifteen--an'," he looked at a
silver watch which he drew from a pocket, "it's pretty near two now."

Without further words--for it seemed useless to argue the point upon
which he was so obviously determined--Barbara urged Billy on, taking the
lead.

For more than an hour she maintained the lead, riding a short distance in
advance, and seemingly paying no attention to Harlan. Yet she noted that
he kept about the same distance from her always--though she never
permitted him to observe that she watched him, for her backward glances
were taken out of the corners of her eyes, when she pretended to be
looking at the country on one side or the other.

Harlan, however, noted the glances. And his lips curved into a faint grin
as he rode. Once when he had dropped behind a little farther than usual,
he leaned over and whispered into Purgatory's ear:

"She's sure ignorin' us, ain't she, you black son-of-a-gun! She ain't
looked back here more'n three times in the last five minutes!"

And yet Harlan's jocular mood did not endure long. During those intervals
in which Barbara kept her gaze straight ahead on the trail, Harlan
regarded her with a grave intentness that betrayed the soberness of his
thoughts.

In all his days he had seen no woman like her; and when she had come
toward him in Lamo, with Higgins close behind her, he had been so
astonished that he had momentarily forgotten Deveny and all the rest of
them.

Women of the kind he had met had never affected him as Barbara had
affected him. He had still a mental picture of her as she had come toward
him, with her hair flying in a golden-brown mass over her shoulders; her
wide, fear-lighted eyes seeking his with an expression of appeal so
eloquent that it had sent a queer, thrilling, protective sensation over
him.

And as she rode ahead of him it was the picture she had made _then_ that
he saw; and the emotions that assailed him were the identical emotions
that had beset him when for a