These gloomy speculations rose and left him like a flock of somber birds as he lifted the slope. Grace Kerr herself was riding homeward, just mounting the hill over which she must pass in a moment and disappear. He unhooked the wire and rode after her. At the hilltop she stopped, unaware of his coming, and looked back. He waved his hat; she waited. "Have you been sick, Duke?" she inquired, after greetings, looking him over with concern. "My horse bit me," said he, passing it off with that old stock pleasantry of the range, which covered anything and everything that a man didn't want to explain. "I missed you along here," she said. She swept him again with that slow, puzzled look of inquiry, her eyes coming back to his face in a frank, unembarrassed stare. "Oh, I know what it is now! You're dressed like you were that day at Misery. I couldn't make it out for a minute." She was not wearing her mannish garb this morning, but divided skirts of corduroy and a white waist with a bit of bright color at the neck. Her white sombrero was the only masculine touch about her, and that rather added to her quick, dark prettiness. "You were wearing a white waist the first time I saw you," he said. "This one," she replied, touching it with simple motion of full identification. Neither of them mentioned the mutual recognition on the day she had been caught cutting the fence. They talked of commonplace things, as youth is constrained to do when its heart and mind are centered on something else which burns within it, the flame of which it cannot cover from any eyes but its own. Life on the range, its social disadvantages, its rough diversions, these they spoke of, Lambert's lips dry with his eagerness to tell her more. How quickly it had laid hold of him again at sight of her, this unreasonable longing! The perfume of his romance suffused her, purging away all that was unworthy. "I trembled every second that day for fear your horse would break through the platform and throw you," she said, suddenly coming back to the subject that he wanted most to discuss. "I didn't think of it till a good while afterward," he said in slow reflection. "I didn't suppose I'd ever see you again, and, of course, I never once thought you were the famous Duke of Chimney Butte I heard so much about when I got home." "More notorious than famous, I'm afraid, Miss Kerr." "Jim Wilder used to work for us; I knew him well." Lambert bent his head, a shadow of deepest gravity falling like a cloud over the animation which had brightened his features but a moment before. He sat in contemplative silence a little while, his voice low when he spoke. "Even though he deserved it, I've always been sorry it happened." "Well, if you're sorry, I guess you're the only one. Jim was a bad kid. Where's that horse you raced the train on?" "I'm resting him up a little." "You had him out here the other day." "Yes. I crippled him up a little since then."