Harshaw calmly took himself out of her way altogether, lighted his pipe, and went down close to the water, and sat there on a stone, and presently, as we could hear, entered into easy conversation with the pink sunbonnet, the face of which leaned toward him over the pony's neck as he stooped to drink. The splashed waters became still, and softly the whole picture--pink sunbonnet, clay-bank pony, pale and shivery willows, and deep blue sky--developed on the negative of the clear lagoon. There was no use in saying how pretty it was, so we resorted to the other note, of disparagement. I remarked that I should not think a pink sunbonnet would be ravishingly becoming to the average Snake River complexion, as I had seen it. "_That_ sunbonnet is becoming, you bet!" Tom remarked. "Wait till you see the face inside it." "Have you seen it?" "Quite frequently. Do you think Harshaw would sit there talking with her, as he does by the hour, if that sunbonnet was not becoming?" "As he does by the hour! And why have we not heard of her before?" I requested to be told. "Business, my dear. She is a feature of the scheme--quite an important one. She represents the hitch which is sure to develop early in the history of every live enterprise." "Indeed?" I said. And if Harshaw talked with her on business, I didn't see what his talking had to do with the face inside her bonnet. "I don't say that it's always on business," Tom threw in significantly. "Who is the lady in the pink sunbonnet, and what is your business with her?" I demanded. "I question the propriety of speaking of her in just that tone," said Tom, "inasmuch as she happens to be a lady--somewhat off the conventional lines. She waters her own stock and milks her own cow, because the old Indian girl who lives with her is laid up at present with a fever. Her father was an artist--one of the great unappreciated"-- "So that was her father painting the Snow Bank?" I interrupted. "Her father is dead, my dear, as you would have learned if you had listened to my story. But he lived here a good many years before he died. He had made a queer marriage, old man Decker tells me, and quarreled with the world on account of it. He came here with his disputed bride. She was somebody else's wife first, I believe, and there was a trifling informality about the matrimonial exchange; but it came out all right. They both died, and a sweeter, fresher little thing than the daughter! Adamant, though--bed-rock, so far as we are concerned." "What do you want that belongs to her?" I asked. "Her island, perhaps?"