Before Solange reappeared ready for supper, Sucatash and Dave had explained all that they knew of the affair to Wallace. He was much interested but very dubious about it all. "Of course, she'll not be going into the mountains at this time o' year," he declared. "It ain't more than a week before the snow's bound to fly, and the Esmeraldas ain't no place for girls in the winter time. I reckon that feller you-all helped get out o' jail and that I planted hosses for won't more than make it across the range before the road's closed. I hope it wasn't nothin' serious he was in for, son." "Nothin' but too much hooch an' rumplin' up a couple of cops," said his son, casually. "Not that I wouldn't have helped so long as he was in fer anything less than murder. The mad'mo'selle wanted him out, yuh see." "S'pose she naturally felt responsible fer him, that a way," agreed Wallace. "Reckon she's well rid o' him, though. Don't sound like the sort o' man yuh'd want a young girl travelin round with. What was he like?" "Tall, good-lookin', foreign-appearin' hombre. Talked pretty good range language though, and he sure could fork a hoss. Seemed to have a gnawin' ambition to coil around all the bootleg liquor there is, though. Outside o' that, he was all right." "De Launay? French name, I reckon." "Yeah, I reckon he'd been a soldier in the French army. Got the idea, somehow." "Well, he's gone--and I reckon it's as well. He won't be botherin' the little lady no more. What does she wear a veil for? Been marked any?" Sucatash was troubled. "Don't know, pop. Never seen her face. Ought to be a sure-enough chiquita, if it's up to the rest of her. D'jever hear a purtier voice?" The old man caught the note of enthusiasm. "Yuh better go slow, son," he said, dryly. "I reckon she's all right--but yuh don't really know nothin'." "Shucks!" retorted his son, calmly. "I don't have to know nothin'. She can run an iron on me any time she wants to. I'm lassoed, thrown an' tied, a'ready." "Which yuh finds me hornin' in before she makes any selection, yuh mottled-topped son of a gun!" Dave warmly put in. "I let's that lady from France conceal her face, her past and any crimes she may have committed, is committin' or be goin' to commit, and I hereby declares myself for her forty ways from the Jack, fer anything from matrimony to murder." "Shucks," said the old man, "you-all are mighty young." "Pop," declared the Wallace heir, solemnly, "this here French lady is clean strain and grades high. Me and Dave may be young, but we ain't making no mistake about her. She has hired herself a couple of hands, I'm telling you."