The wind, stirring softly, set the aspen leaves quivering. The stars, chilled in the thin, clear night air, hung diamond-like in the heavens and the eastern sky across the distant desert paled for the rising moon. The two standing at the horse's head listened a moment together in the darkness. De Spain, leaning forward, said something in a low, laughing voice. Nan made no answer. Then, bending, he took her hand and, before she could release it, caught it up to his lips. * * * * * For a long time after he had gone she stood, listening for a shot--wondering, breathless at moments, whether de Spain could get past the waiting traps. The moon came up, and still lingering, torn with suspense, she watched a drift of fleecy clouds darken it. She scanned anxiously the wrinkled face of the desert which, with a woman's craft, hides at night the accidents of age. It seemed to Nan as if she could overlook every foot of the motionless sea for miles before her; but she well knew how much it could conceal of ambush and death even when it professed so fairly to reveal all. Strain her ears as she would, the desert gave back no ripple of sound. No shot echoed from its sinister recesses--not even the clatter of retreating hoofs. De Spain, true to all she had ever heard of his Indian-like stealth, had left her side unabashed and unafraid--living, laughing, paying bold court to her even when she stubbornly refused to be courted--and had made himself in the twinkling of an eye a part of the silence beyond--the silence of the night, the wind, the stars, the waste of sand, and of all the mystery that brooded upon it. She would have welcomed, in her keen suspense, a sound of some kind, some reminder that he yet lived and could yet laugh; none came. When it seemed as if an hour must have passed Nan felt her way noiselessly home. She regained her room as she had left it, through her east window, and, throwing herself across her bed, fell into a heavy sleep. * * * * * Day was breaking when the night boss, standing in the doorway at the Calabasas barns, saw a horseman riding at a leisurely pace up the Thief River road. The barnman scrutinized the approaching stranger closely. There was something strange and something familiar in the outlines of the figure. But when the night-rider had dismounted in front of the barn door, turned his horse loose, and, limping stiffly, walked forward on foot, the man rubbed his eyes hard before he could believe them. Then he uttered an incredulous greeting and led Henry de Spain into the barn office. "There's friends of yours in your room up-stairs right now," he declared, bulging with shock. De Spain, sitting down, forbade the barnman to disturb them, only asking who they were.