rtunate to get a place as comfortable and neat as
this. We're really in the desert. We will see the rooms, please."

Mrs. Weston could find no fault with the rooms. They were neat and
clean, even to the window-panes. Alice Weston was delighted. From her
window she could see miles of the western desert, and the far,
mysterious ranges bulked against the blue of the north; ranges that
seemed to whisper of romance, the unexplored, the alluring.

While Mrs. Adams was arranging things, Alice Weston gazed out of the
window. Below in the street a cowboy passed jauntily. A stray burro
crossed the street and nosed among some weeds. Then a stolid Indian
stalked by.

"Why, that is a real Indian!" exclaimed the girl.

"A Navajo," said Mrs. Adams. "They come in quite often."

"Really? And--oh, I forgot--the young man who rescued us told us that he
was your son."

"Lorry! Rescued you?"

"Yes." And the girl told Mrs. Adams about the accident and the tramp.

"I'm thankful that he didn't get killed," was Mrs. Adams's comment when
the girl had finished.

Alone in her room, Alice Weston bared her round young arms and enjoyed a
real, old-fashioned wash in a real, old-fashioned washbowl. Who could be
unhappy in this glorious country? But mother seemed so unimpressed! "And
I hope that steering-knuckle doesn't come for a month," the girl told a
framed lithograph of "Custer's Last Fight," which, contrary to all
precedent, was free from fly specks.

She recalled the scene at the Notch: the sickening sway of the car; the
heavy, brutal features of the bandit, who seemed to have risen from the
ground; the unexpected appearance of the young cowboy, the flash of his
rope, and a struggling form whirling through the brush.

And she had said "please" when she had asked the young cowboy to let the
man go. He had refused. She thought Western men more gallant. But what
difference did that make? She would never see him again. The young
cowboy had seemed rather nice, until just toward the last. As for the
other man--she shivered as she wondered what would have happened if the
cowboy had not arrived when he did.

It occurred to her that she had never been refused a request in her life
until that afternoon. And the fact piqued her. The fate of the tramp was
a secondary consideration now. She and her mother were safe. The car
would have to be repaired; but that was unimportant. The fact that they
were stranded in a real desert town, with Indians a