ought of Stewart, and the watchfulness growing out
of it she discovered more about him. He was not happy; he often paced
up and down the grove at night; he absented himself from camp sometimes
during the afternoon when Nels and Nick and Monty were there; he was
always watching the trails, as if he expected to see some one come
riding up. He alone of the cowboys did not indulge in the fun and talk
around the camp-fire. He remained preoccupied and sad, and was always
looking away into distance. Madeline had a strange sense of his
guardianship over her; and, remembering Don Carlos, she imagined he
worried a good deal over his charge, and, indeed, over the safety of all
the party.

But if he did worry about possible visits from wandering guerrillas, why
did he absent himself from camp? Suddenly into Madeline's inquisitive
mind flashed a remembrance of the dark-eyed Mexican girl, Bonita, who
had never been heard of since that night she rode Stewart's big horse
out of El Cajon. The remembrance of her brought an idea. Perhaps Stewart
had a rendezvous in the mountains, and these lonely trips of his were to
meet Bonita. With the idea hot blood flamed into Madeline's cheek.
Then she was amazed at her own feelings--amazed because her swiftest
succeeding thought was to deny the idea--amazed that its conception had
fired her cheek with shame. Then her old self, the one aloof from this
red-blooded new self, gained control over her emotions.

But Madeline found that new-born self a creature of strange power to
return and govern at any moment. She found it fighting loyally for what
intelligence and wisdom told her was only her romantic conception of
a cowboy. She reasoned: If Stewart were the kind of man her feminine
skepticism wanted to make him, he would not have been so blind to the
coquettish advances of Helen and Dorothy. He had once been--she did not
want to recall what he had once been. But he had been uplifted. Madeline
Hammond declared that. She was swayed by a strong, beating pride, and
her instinctive woman's faith told her that he could not stoop to such
dishonor. She reproached herself for having momentarily thought of it.

*****

One afternoon a huge storm-cloud swooped out of the sky and enveloped
the crags. It obscured the westering sun and laid a mantle of darkness
over the park. Madeline was uneasy because several of her party,
including Helen and Dorothy, had ridden off with the cowboys that
afternoon a