For some seconds Smythe lay half-stunned; but before Marion and Hillyer, leaping from the automobile, were able to reach him, he sat up, and began to straighten out his crushed sombrero, eyeing it critically. He was covered with dust, and one end of his white collar, torn from the button, stuck out above his coat. But his aplomb was perfect. "As I was saying, when interrupted," he began, continuing to minister to the sombrero, "you see I am an accomplished horseman." Marion and Hillyer broke out in uncontrollable laughter. Then Hillyer hastened to assist Smythe to rise. "Not hurt, I hope?" said Robert. "Objectively, no. Subjectively, yes. Sartorially, a wreck." They laughed now without restraint, which seemed to please Smythe immensely. He proceeded to tuck the end of the torn collar back into its place, where it refused to stay; to brush his clothes; to adjust the abused sombrero in exactly the long-studied angle on his head. "I hope you'll forgive us for laughing," said Marion, "but--" "Say no more about it, please!" protested Smythe. "I'd rather make you laugh than weep--assuming that anybody would weep for me." "Oh, I'd have felt very badly if you'd been hurt," Marion assured him. "And you might have been, too." "No, a cropper like that's nothing. Peanuts isn't--" He paused just a second to look into Marion's eyes with an expression that arrested her attention sharply. "Peanuts isn't Sunnysides." "Sunnysides?" she cried out unguardedly. Smythe's eyes warned her, as he waited to give her time for self-control. He did not know how far Hillyer was in her confidence. "Is there news--about--Sunnysides?" she faltered, struggling desperately with herself. "Yes," he answered. Then he continued slowly, in as light a manner as possible, the while he held her with a concentrated gaze: "I'd been down the valley as far as the mouth of the canyon. Coming back, about two miles below where Haig's road joins this, I saw the sorrels in a cloud of dust. 'Hello!' I said. 'Something's up, or the sorrels wouldn't be driven like that.' In a minute or two I made out Bill Craven, one of Haig's men, leaning forward in the seat of a road wagon, and laying on the whip. 'If Haig saw that!' I thought. And so I--" "Go on, please!" said Marion shrilly. But Smythe was purposely deliberate; for he saw Hillyer looking at her curiously. "I wasn't going to let anybody abuse his horses if I could prevent it. Besides, how did I know but Craven was stealing the sorrels? I threw my pony straight across the road. Craven reined the sorrels up on their hind legs, almost on top of me. "'What in hell?' he yelled. "'That's what I want to know,' I answered. "'Can't you see I'm in a hurry, damn you?' he shouted angrily. "'That's exactly what I do see,' I replied. 'But Haig never whips those horses.' "'That's none of your business, and Haig ain't carin' much now,' he fired back at me. 'Get out o' my way, or I'll--'