well, he is rather suspicious of him. He seems to be unable to
understand why Stafford should employ a two-gun man to look up stray
cows."

Below this appeared a brief reference to Ferguson.

"He is not a bit conceited--rather bashful, I should say. But
embarrassment in him is attractive. No hero should be conceited.
There is a wide difference between impertinence and frankness.
Ferguson seems to speak frankly, but with a subtle shade. I think this
is a very agreeable trait for a hero in a novel."

There followed more interesting scraps concerning Leviatt, which would
have caused the range boss many bad moments. And there were
interesting bits of description--jotted down when she became impressed
with a particularly odd view of the country. But there were no more
references to Ferguson. He--being the hero of her novel--must be
studied thoroughly.

CHAPTER XII

THE STORY BEGINS

Miss Radford tied her pony to the trunk of a slender fir-balsam and
climbed to the summit of a small hill. There were some trees, quite a
bit of grass, some shrubbery, on the hill--and no snakes. She made
sure of this before seating herself upon a little shelf of rock, near a
tall cedar.

Half a mile down the river she could see a corner of Ben's cabin, a
section of the corral fence, and one of the small outbuildings.
Opposite the cabin, across the river, rose the buttes that met her eyes
always when she came to the cabin door. This hill upon which she sat
was one that she saw often, when in the evening, watching the setting
sun, she followed its golden rays with her eyes. Many times, as the
sun had gone slowly down into a rift of the mountains, she had seen the
crest of this hill shimmering in a saffron light; the only spot in the
flat that rose above the somber, oncoming shadows of the dusk.

From here, it seemed, began the rose veil that followed the broad
saffron shaft that led straight to the mountains. Often, watching the
beauty of the hill during the long sunset, she had felt a deep awe
stirring her. Romance was here, and mystery; it was a spot favored by
the Sun-Gods, who surrounded it with a glorious halo, lingeringly,
reluctantly withdrawing as the long shadows of the twilight crept over
the face of the world.

It was not her first visit to the hill. Many times she had come here,
charmed with the beauty of the view, and during one of those visits she
had decided that seated on the shelf rock on the summi