He was irritated now by the prospect of labor at the station. Even should he find some willing male being whose assistance with the tire might be invoked, the task would still involve himself rather strenuously; and above all things he loathed rough usage of his hands. For three more miles he cursed the mechanism, then he halted the car at the station. A shack that served as lodging-house, saloon, and dining-room, a shack for a stable, and a shack for a shed, together with a rough corral, comprised the entire group of buildings at the place. Six or eight fine cottonwoods and a number of twisted apple trees made the little place decidedly inviting. Behind these, rising almost sheer from the level yard, the mountains heaved upward grayly, their vast bulk broken, some hundred yards away, by a yawning rock canyon, steep and forbidding. The station proprietor, who emerged from the door at sound of the halting machine, was a small, lank individual, as brown as an Indian and as wrinkled as a crocodile. The driver in the car addressed him shortly. "I wonder if you can help me put on a tire?" The lank little host regarded him quietly, then looked at the women and drew his hand across his mouth. "Wal, I dunno," he answered. "I've set a tire and I've set a hen, but I wouldn't like to tell ye what was hatched." The girl in the tonneau laughed in frank delight--a musical outburst that flattered the station host tremendously. The man at the wheel was already alighting. "You'll do," he said. "My name is Bostwick. I'm on my way to Goldite, in a hurry. It won't take us long, but it wants two men on the job." He had a way of thrusting his disagreeable tasks upon his fellow beings before they were prepared either to accept or refuse a proposition. He succeeded here so promptly that the girl in the car made no effort to restrain her amusement. She was radiantly smiling as she leaned above the wheel where the two men were presently at work. In the midst of the toil a sound of whistling came upon the air. The girl in the auto looked up, alertly. It was the Toreador's song from Carmen that she heard, riotously rendered. A moment later the whistler appeared--and an exclamation all but escaped the girl's red, parted lips. Mounted on a calico pony of strikingly irregular design, a horseman had halted at the bend of a trail that led to the rear of the station. He saw the girl and his whistling ceased. From his looks he might have been a bandit or a prince. He was a roughly dressed, fearless-looking man of the hills, youthful, tall, and as carelessly graceful in the saddle as a fish in its natural clement.