This ring was indeed a gem. It was wide, as most of their rings are, cut in two on the inner side so that it could be made larger or smaller by "springing" it to fit any finger, and in the top was set a turquoise as blue as a summer sky--a stone precious to the Navajos--that among the tribe would have bought twenty ponies, a hundred sheep, and squaws galore. Around the ring ran the most intricate and delicate carving, and the whole effect was at once unique and barbaric. The girl's hand was outstretched for the ring, and almost mechanically the man turned and dropped it into the upturned palm. "Well, Miss Nell, I've warned you, and I'm sure if Mr. Hull were here that he'd feel just as I do." His voice grew tense. "I can't go with you today, for I've got to go over the other side of the mountain to see if I can find those lost horses, and won't be back till dark." The girl, scarcely heeding his words, took the ring, and in a mock-heroic sort of way kissed and slipped it on to her engagement finger, a gleam of mischief in her eyes, at which action Cameron, stung almost to madness, smothered a groan, and strode across the porch, his spurs clanking on the floor, gathering up his hair rope as he went. With one hand on the pommel of the saddle and the other on the pony's mane, he leaped lightly into his seat without aid of stirrup and, bringing the coil of rope down on the animal's flank, went off down the line of wire fence on a dead run, and soon turned out of sight around a low hill in the valley. The girl watched him in silence until he was lost to view, and then, with a gay laugh, turned into the room, saying, "Poor Cam, what fun it is to tease him!" A moment later, when Juan appeared at the door with her horse, she pulled on her pretty buckskin gloves, and with a "Goodbye, Mary, I'll be home by noon," to the heavy-faced cook, who stood watching her from the door of the log kitchen, she rode off almost as fast as Cameron, but in a different direction. Three months before these happenings George Hull had gone down to the little railroad station, some thirty miles from the ranch, to meet his wife's only sister, who was coming to spend the summer with them in Arizona, and from her first day she had taken to the life like a duck to water. She was a fearless horsewoman, and never so happy as when out on the range riding with the cowboys, if they were there, or alone if they were not. Nell Steele was a warm-hearted, impulsive girl, but she could no more help making a slave of every man she met than she could stop breathing. It was an easy task for her, too, and it mattered not whether it was some high-bred, educated gentleman, or a rough Texas "puncher" who had never in all his life spoken a dozen words to a woman of her class. And naturally with such surroundings, with men unused to women's wiles, she soon had the whole country at her feet.