"Did your father buy this sunset with the ranch? And has he got a guarantee that it will perform every night?" he asked. "Did you ever see anything like it?" she cried. "I have looked at them all my life and I never get tired." He laughed softly, his indolent, sleepy look on her. "Some things I would never get tired of looking at either." Without speaking she nodded, still absorbing the sunset. "But it wouldn't be that kind of scenery," he added. "How tall are you, _muchacha_?" Her glance came around in surprise. "I don't know. About five foot five, I think. Why?" "I'm working on that ad. How would this do? 'Miss Three-Quarters-Past-Seventeen wants to meet up with gentleman between eighteen and forty-eight. Object, matrimony. Description of lady: Slim, medium height, brunette, mop of blue-black hair, the prettiest dimple you ever saw----'" "Now I know you're making fun of me. I'm mad." And the dimple flashed into being. "'--mostly says the opposite of what she means, has a----'" "I don't. I don't" "'--has a spice of the devil in her, which----'" "Now, I _am_ mad," she interrupted, laughing. "'--which is excusable, since she has the reddest lips for kissing in Arizona.'" He had gone too far. Her innocence was in arms. Norris knew it by the swiftness with which the smile vanished from her face, by the flash of anger in the eyes. "I prefer to talk about something else, Mr. Norris," she said with all the prim stiffness of a schoolgirl. Her father relieved the tension by striding across from the stable. With him came a bowlegged young fellow in plain leathers. The youngster was Charley Hymer, one of the riders for the Bar Double G. "You're here at the right time, Norris," Lee said grimly. "Charley has just come down from Antelope Pass. He found one of my cows dead, with a bullet hole through the forehead. The ashes of a fire were there, and in the brush not far away a running iron." The eyes of Norris narrowed to slits. He was the cattle detective of the association and for a year now the rustlers had outgeneraled him. "I'll have you take me to the spot, Charley. Get a move on you and we'll get there soon as the moon is up." Melissy gripped the arms of her chair tightly with both hands. She was looking at Norris with a new expression, a kind of breathless fear. She knew him for a man who could not be swerved from the thing he wanted. For all his easy cynicism, he had the reputation of being a bloodhound on the trail. Moreover, she knew that he was no friend to Jack Flatray. Why had she left that running iron as evidence to convict its owner? What folly not to have removed it from the immediate scene of the crime! The cattle detective and her father had moved a few steps away and were talking in low tones. Melissy became aware of a footfall. The man who called himself Morse came around the corner of the house and stopped at the porch steps. "May I speak to you a moment, Miss Lee?" he said in a low voice. "Of course."