“I am a--an artist,” said Carroll Forbes. “Is there any place hereabouts where I can get my meals and sometimes a bed, while I am sketching in the mountains?” The man stared at him. “Would it have been better if I had said I was a surveyor?” asked Forbes of his confused inner consciousness. “We feed folks here sometimes--that is, my wife does. Mebbe you could have a shake-down in the loft. Or there’s Connor’s ranch off north a ways. But they don’t care about taking in folks up there.” “Then, if you would ask your wife?” ventured Forbes, politely. “I shall not trouble you long,” he added. “Ellen!” A woman appeared at the door, then moving slowly forward, stood at her husband’s side, and the admiration Forbes had felt at the sight of the man flamed into sudden enthusiasm as he watched the wife. She was tall, with heavy, black hair, great eyes like unpolished jet, one of the thick white, smooth, perfectly colorless skins, which neither the sun nor the wind affect, and clear-cut, perfect features. Standing so, side by side, the two were singularly well worth looking at. “What a regal pair!” was Forbes’s internal comment; and while they conferred together he watched them idly, wondering what their history was, for of course they had one. It is safe to affirm that every human creature cast in the mould of the beautiful has, or is to have, one. “She says you c’n stay,” announced the man. “Just put those traps of yours inside, will you?” and, turning, he limped off the length of the platform at a call from somebody who had ridden up with jingling spurs. Forbes, left to his own devices, picked up his valise, then set it down again and looked around him helplessly, wondering if there was a night train by which he could get away from this heaven-forsaken spot. “If you want to see where you can sleep,” said a voice at his side, “I will show you.” It was the woman. She bent as she spoke to pick up some of his impedimenta, but he hastily forestalled her with a murmur of deprecation. She turned and looked at him, and as he met her eyes it occurred to him that the indifference of her face was the indifference of the desert--arid and hopeless. The look she gave him was searching and impersonal; he saw no reason for it, nor for the slow, dark color that spread over her face, and there was less than no excuse for the way she set her lips and stretched a peremptory hand, saying, “Give me those,” in tones that could not be disobeyed. To his own astonishment he surrendered them, and followed her meekly up a ladder-like flight of steps to the rough loft over the station. It was unfinished, but partitioned into two rooms. She opened the door of one of these apartments, silently set his luggage inside, and vanished down the stairs. Forbes sat down on the edge of a broken chair and looked about him. “Now, in heaven’s name,” he demanded of the barren walls, “what have I let myself in for, and why did I do it?”