told him more about it all? He felt that she had taken a kind of
mean advantage of his unwavering affection for her. He was a man, so far
as earning his wage was concerned. And she was the best woman in the
world--but then women didn't understand the unwritten customs of the
range.

On a sandy ridge he reined up and gazed at the desert below. The bleak
flats wavered in the white light of noon. The farthest hills to the
south seemed but a few miles away.

For some time he focused his gaze at the Notch, from which the road
sprang and flowed in slow undulations to a vanishing point in the blank
spaces of the west. His pony, Gray Leg, head up and nostrils working,
twitched back one ear as Lorry spoke: "You see it, too?"

Gray Leg continued to gaze into the distance, occasionally stamping an
impatient forefoot, as though anxious to be off. Lorry lowered his glass
and raised it again. In the circle of the binoculars he saw a tiny,
distant figure dismount from a black horse and walk back and forth
across the road directly below the Notch. Lorry wiped his glasses and
centered them on the Notch again. The horseman had led his horse to a
clump of brush. Presently the twinkling front of an automobile
appeared--a miniature machine that wormed slowly through the Notch and
descended the short pitch beyond. Suddenly the car swerved and stopped.
Lorry saw a flutter of white near the machine. Then the concealed
horseman appeared on foot. Lorry slipped the glass in his shirt.

"We'll just mosey over and get a closer look," he told his pony. "Things
don't look just right over there."

Gray Leg, scenting a new interest, tucked himself together. The sand
sprayed to little puffs of dust as he swung to a lope.

Lorry was curious--and a bit elated at the promise of a break in the
monotony of hunting stray cattle. Probably some Eastern tourist had
taken the grade below the Notch too fast and ditched his machine. Lorry
would ride over and help him to right the car and set the pilgrim on his
way rejoicing. He had helped to right cars before. Last month, for
instance; that big car with the uniformed driver and the wonderfully
gowned women. He recalled the fact that one of them had been absolutely
beautiful, despite her strange mufflings. She had offered to pay him for
his trouble. When he refused she had thanked him eloquently with her
fine eyes and thrown him a kiss as he turned to go. She had thrown that
kiss with two hands! There was noth