"You mean to hide me away among the crags and clouds?" replied Madeline,
with a laugh.

"Well, it'd amount to that. Your friends need not know. Perhaps in a few
weeks this spell of trouble on the border will be over till fall."

"You say it's a hard climb up to this place?"

"It surely is. Your friends will get the real thing if they make that
trip."

"That suits me. Helen especially wants something to happen. And they are
all crazy for excitement."

"They'd get it up there. Bad trails, canyons to head, steep climbs,
wind-storms, thunder and lightning, rain, mountain-lions and wildcats."

"Very well, I am decided. Stewart, of course you will take charge? I
don't believe I--Stewart, isn't there something more you could tell
me--why you think, why you know my own personal liberty is in peril?"

"Yes. But do not ask me what it is. If I hadn't been a rebel soldier I
would never have known."

"If you had not been a rebel soldier, where would Madeline Hammond be
now?" she asked, earnestly.

He made no reply.

"Stewart," she continued, with warm impulse, "you once mentioned a debt
you owed me--" And seeing his dark face pale, she wavered, then went on.
"It is paid."

"No, no," he answered, huskily.

"Yes. I will not have it otherwise."

"No. That never can be paid."

Madeline held out her hand.

"It is paid, I tell you," she repeated.

Suddenly he drew back from the outstretched white hand that seemed to
fascinate him.

"I'd kill a man to touch your hand. But I won't touch it on the terms
you offer."

His unexpected passion disconcerted her.

"Stewart, no man ever before refused to shake hands with me, for any
reason. It--it is scarcely flattering," she said, with a little
laugh. "Why won't you? Because you think I offer it as mistress to
servant--rancher to cowboy?"

"No."

"Then why? The debt you owed me is paid. I cancel it. So why not shake
hands upon it, as men do?"

"I won't. That's all."

"I fear you are ungracious, whatever your reason," she replied. "Still,
I may offer it again some day. Good night."

He said good night and turned. Madeline wonderingly watched him go down
the path with his hand on the black horse's neck.

She went in to rest a little before dressing for dinner, and, being
fatigued from the day's riding and excitement, she fell asleep. When she
awoke it was twilight. She wondered why her Mexican maid had not come to
her, and she rang the bell. The maid did not put