"There is something bad in his face--something hiding, it seems to me," she said, without show of conscious evasion. "I'll call him, no matter what move he makes," Slavens declared, looking speculatively across the gorge. "Look how high the sun is up the wall over yonder. I think we'd better be going back." "Oh, I've kept you too long," she cried in self-reproach. "And to think you were in the saddle all night." "Yes; I lost the trail and rode a good many miles out of the way," said he. "But for that I'd have been on hand an hour sooner." "Well, you were in time, anyway." "And I've drawn blindly," he laughed. "I've got a piece of land marked 'Grazing,' on the chart. It may be worth a fortune, and it may be worth twenty cents an acre. But I'm going to see it through. When are you going to file?" "My number comes on the fifth day, but lapses may bring me in line tomorrow," she answered. "Smith, the stage-driver, knows of a piece adjoining the one he has selected for himself, if nobody 'beats him to it,' as he says. He has given me the numbers, and I'm going to take his word for it. About half of it can be irrigated, and it fronts on the river. The rest is on the hills." "I hope you may get it. Smith ought to know what's good in this country and what isn't. When you have it you'll lead on the water and plant the rose?" "And plant the rose," she repeated softly. "Don't you think," he asked, taking her hand tenderly as she walked by his side, "that you'd better let me do the rough work for you now?" "You are too generous, and too trusting in one unknown," she faltered. The beat of hoofs around the sharp turn in the road where it led out into the valley in which Meander lay, fell sharp and sudden on their ears. There the way was close-hemmed with great boulders, among which it turned and wound, and they scarcely had time to find a standing-place between two riven shoulders of stone when the horseman swept around the turn at a gallop. He rode crouching in his saddle as if to reach forward and seize some fleeing object of pursuit, holding his animal in such slack control that he surely must have ridden them down if they had not given him the entire way. His hat was blown back from his dark face, which bore a scowl, and his lips were moving as if he muttered as he rode. Abreast of the pair he saw them where they stood, and touched his hat in salute. In the dust that he left behind they resumed their way. Dr. Slavens had drawn Agnes Horton's hand through his arm; he felt that it was cold and trembling. He looked at her, perplexity in his kind eyes. "That's the man who stood with Peterson at the head of the line," he said. "Yes; Jerry Boyle," she whispered, looking behind her fearfully. "Let's hurry on! I'm afraid," she added with the ineffectiveness of dissimulation, "that I've kept you from your sleep too long. Together with your awful experience and that long ride, you must be shattered for the want of rest."