He asked her to thank the doctor and to say that he would try to come. Then they went steadily on in their opposite ways and neither one of them looked back again, and Ginger had almost two hours (Ted made even better speed on the home trail) in which to get herself thoroughly in hand before she met the campers. It suited her to find them all assembled at the “Civic Center” as they called the cleared space about the camp fire. The mail had just been brought over from Pfeiffer’s, and they had all had their tingling cold showers and made their bluff, informal toilets for dinner, and there was a chattering over letters and magazines which ceased instantly as Ginger rode up. She might be imagining a sort of electric quiet on the part of the whole group, she told herself, but she was not imagining anything about the doctor and her Aunt Fan. The doctor paused in the middle of his gesture in handing a plump letter to the betrothed girl, and his eyes twinkled uncontrollably, and Mrs. Featherstone put her pink sport handkerchief to her lips. “Well,” said Dr. Mayfield, genially, “did you meet the Ranger? And did you get our permits?” “Yes,” said Ginger. “I met the Ranger at Cold Spring, and here are your permits.” She leaned from the saddle to hand them to him. Then, addressing herself to the others, smiling a little at the very blond girl who was holding up two crossed fingers for her attention--“And it was a very nice surprise! I find your Ranger is an old friend. Yes; he was Aleck’s best friend--over there. He was with him--on the last day.” (Let them laugh now, if they could! But they didn’t laugh; they smiled at her and murmured kind little fragments of sentences, and she went on.) “And he made Aunt Fan and me a visit at Dos Pozos last summer. You’ll be glad to see how husky he’s grown in this work, Aunt Fan!” Mary Wiley could not have done it more handily, with nicer values. “And it was very thrilling--I saw him shoot a mountain lion! I’ll tell you all about it at supper, but I must fly now, if I’m to have my shower!” She delivered Ted over to his master with a warm word of homage, and ran to her cabin and went into it and locked both doors. She didn’t want her Aunt Fan’s prominent blue eyes. Swiftly, an eye on the little traveling clock in its case of scarlet leather, she pulled off her clothes and jumped under the shower, and her slim brown body was shivering before the nipping water touched it. CHAPTER XIII AT supper time she told them, graphically, and with full and generous credit to the Ranger, about the mountain lion and the fawn, and was entirely amiable about repeating in detail to any one who wished to hear more. She said to the doctor, while they were at table, lifting her voice a little over the neighboring talk, that she was delighted to see Dean Wolcott so robust. This life must agree tremendously with him. How long--she was brightly, coolly interested--had he been in the west?