Captain lacked the fire, the ramping keenness of the Ironwoods, the spirit and dash of the Finger Marks. For a long time the girl in the willows watched them. Then as they came near she rose and caught El Rey's bridle. He was no gentleman, this big blue-silver king. He was savage and wild and imperious. He hated other horses with a quick hatred sometimes and had been known to wreak this sudden rage upon them in sickening fury. So Tharon held him with a strong brown hand wrapped in the chain below the Spanish spade bit in his mouth. She stood beside him, waiting, a slim, golden creature, tawny of hair and blue of eye, and the great horse towered above her mightily, his silver mane blowing up above his arching neck in the little wind that came from the south. They made a picture that Kenset never forgot, as he swung round the willows and faced them. El Rey screamed and pounded with his striped hoofs, but Tharon jerked him down with no gentle hand. "Be still, you bully!" she said sharply. "Why, Miss Last!" cried the forest man, "I'm so glad to meet you!" There was the genuine delight of a boy in his voice, and Tharon caught the note. The sweet, disarming smile parted her lips and she was all girl at the moment, artless, innocent, unstained by the shadow of lawlessness and crime that seemed to ever hang above her in Kenset's thoughts. "Are you?" "I certainly am." He swung down, gave Captain a drink at the edge of the spring farthest from El Rey, dropped the rein when he had finished, and swung around to face the girl. He took off his wide hat and wiped his forehead with a square of linen finer than anything of its kind she had ever seen. Then he stood for a moment looking straight into her eyes with his smiling dark ones. It seemed to Tharon that this man was always smiling. "This is your spring, isn't it?" he asked. "Yes. The Silver Hollow. Th' Gold Pool is farther south toward th' Black Coulee. There was another one, fine as this, perhaps a better one, up on th' Cup Rim Range, but Courtrey blew her up, damn him! She was called th' Crystal." Kenset caught his breath, mentally, all but physically, and put up a hand to cover his lips. This _was_ another type of woman from any he had ever met, in truth. The oath, rolling roundly over her full red lips, was as unconscious as the long breath that lifted her breast at the memory of that outrage. "We replaced her with a well--an' it's a corker. Mebby better than th' old Crystal, though she was a lovely thing. As clear as--as ice that's frozen hard without a ripple of white. You know that kind?" "Yes," said Kenset gravely. "Well," sighed Tharon, "she's gone, an' there ain't no use cryin' over spilt milk. What you ben a-doin' sence I helped you hang th' picture?" "Won't you sit down?" Kenset stepped aside. "It is uncomfortable to stand through a visit--and I mean to have a long talk-fest with you, if you will be so kind."