And when he told her how little he himself had had to do with, and how little he knew about girls, even from boyhood, how she feigned not to believe, and believed him still! They were two children raised in the magic of an hour to the supreme height of life and dizzy together on its summit. "I don't see how you can care for _me_, Henry. Oh, I mean it," she protested, holding her head resolutely up. "You know who we are, away off there in the mountains. Every one hates us; I suppose they've plenty of reason to: we hate everybody else. And why shouldn't we? We're at war with every one. You know, better than I do, what goes on in the Gap. I don't want to know; I try not to know; Uncle Duke tries to keep things from me. When you began to act--as if you cared for me--that day on Music--I couldn't believe you meant it at all. And yet--I'm afraid I liked to try to think you did. When you looked at me I felt as if you could see right through me." Confidences never came to an end. And diplomacy came into its own almost at once in de Spain's efforts to improve his relations with the implacable Duke. The day came when Nan's uncle could be taken home. De Spain sent to him a soft-spoken emissary, Bob Scott, offering to provide a light stage, with his compliments, for the trip. The intractable mountaineer, with his refusal to accept the olive-branch, blew Bob out of the room. Nan was crushed by the result, but de Spain was not to be dismayed. Lefever came to him the day after Nan had got her uncle home. "Henry," he began without any preliminaries, "there is one thing about your precipitate ride up Music Mountain that I never got clear in my mind. After the fight, your cartridge-belt was hanging up in the barn at Calabasas for two weeks. You walked in to us that morning with your belt buckled on. You told us you put it on before you came up-stairs. What? Oh, yes, I know, Henry. But that belt wasn't hanging down-stairs with your coat earlier in the evening. No, Henry: it wasn't, not when I looked. Don't tell me such things, because--I don't know. Where was the belt when you found it?" "Some distance from the coat, John. I admit that. I'll tell you: some one had moved the belt. It was not where I left it. I was hurried the morning I rode in and I can't tell you just where I found it." Lefever never batted an eyelash. "I know you can't, Henry. Because you won't. That Scotch hybrid McAlpin knows a few things, too, that he won't tell. All I want to say is, you can trust that man too far. He's got all my recent salary. Every time Jeffries raises my pay that hairy-pawed horse-doctor reduces it just so much a month. And he does it with one pack of fifty-two small cards that you could stick into your vest pocket." "McAlpin has a wife and children to support," suggested de Spain. "Don't think for a moment he does it," returned Lefever vehemently. "I support his wife and children, myself." "You shouldn't play cards, John."