She rode alone, and very slowly. The whole broad plain was beginning to glow with sunset. But Hilda had no eyes for the glories of the sky; all she could see was the empty trail that stretched toward the golden rim in the west. Pearse hadn’t come—or she’d missed him. Back of her, as she halted, was a break of the creek—a deep, shadowy place of willows and wild plum. Well—she’d go down there and wash her face—she knew from the way Uncle Hank had looked at her that washing was badly needed. But when she turned her pony she saw that some one else was there; a horse was drinking at the creek; its rider looked sharply around as she came down the slope. It was very dusky in the hollow. For a moment she wondered if she hadn’t stumbled onto one of the rustlers, or even overhauled Colonel Marchbanks, who had gone after them. Then the man pulled up his pony’s head, wheeled it and came toward her. She was in full light, he in shadow; she could only see that he was a big, broad-shouldered fellow, fair-haired, in the ordinary cowboy dress, and she believed him to be some one she had never seen before until he came close, lifting his hat, with: “Why, it _is_ Hilda—and I believe you don’t know me!” “Oh, Pearse!” In the first shock of delight, the relief from the long sense of disappointment, Hilda forgot her flying hair, her dust-streaked face. “Oh, Pearse—oh, Pearse!” He put his pony in close enough to shake hands, smiling at her a little oddly. And, all at once, she was shy of him, after all. He looked so terribly grown up. No, he wasn’t her Boy-On-The-Train any more. It made her catch her breath to remember the five days in the cyclone cellar, when he’d played games with her, and even taken a sort of hand at being a princely fugitive while she was a princess. This tall, dignified young man was different, too, from the big boy with the grouch who brought the Sunday pony back to her that time on the trail coming from El Capitan. “How did you get here without my seeing you?” she asked, a little breathlessly. “I was watching—right where you said—as well as I could. We’ve had a stampede, and—well, I guess you might call it rustlers—the Marchbanks cattle that we were pasturing on the Sorrows.” “Yes. I know.” Pearse gave her another of those queer looks. But he let it go at that and finished: “I circled around the short-cut to get here. Didn’t want to be seen.” “Who—who didn’t you want to see you, Pearse?” Hilda asked humbly. “Uncle Hank?” He shook his head. “Not that I’d mind going over to the ranch and speaking to him to-day. I’m in no trouble. I’d not be asking anything of him. It’s Marchbanks that I don’t want to see me this time, or know I’m in Lame Jones County.” “Oh,” said Hilda. Then, “Listen, Pearse. Pull back in here, if you mean to keep out of sight.”