He was scrambling up the hill to the west of the cabin that day to another bee tree that he had discovered, when he heard her shrill shouting down below. He turned and saw her and the white mare before the cabin, and the girl was looking about for him. He returned her shout, and stood on a blackened stump in the chaparral, waving his hat above the foliage. "I get you!" she shrilled at last. "Stay there! I'm coming up!" Fifteen minutes later, panting, now on hands and knees, now crawling flat, she drew near to him. A bird can go through California "locked" chaparral if it will be content to hop from twig to twig, but the ponderous human animal must emulate Nebuchadnezzar if he or she would penetrate its mysteries. "What a delightful route you chose for your morning crawl," she puffed, as at last she lay gasping at the foot of the stump on which he sat and laughed at her. Oliver lighted a cigarette and inhaled indolently as he watched her lying there with heaving breast, her arms thrown wide. She did everything as naturally as does a child. She wore fringed leather chaps today, and remarked, when she sat up and dusted the trash from her hair, that she was glad she had done so since he had made her come crawling to his feet. "And that reminds me of something that I've decided to ask you," she added. "Has it occurred to you that I am throwing myself at you?" She looked straight into his face as she put the naïve question to him. "Why do you ask that?" he countered, eyes on the tip of his cigarette. "I'll tell you why when you've answered." "Then of course not." "I suppose I _am_ a bit crude," she mused. "At least it must look that way to the natives here-about. I was fairly confident, though, that you wouldn't think me unmaidenly. I sought you out deliberately. I was lonely and wanted a friend. I had heard that you were a University man. You told Mr. Tamroy, you know. It's perfectly proper deliberately to try and make a friend of a person, isn't it?--if you think both of you may be benefited. And does it make a great deal of difference if the subject chances to be of the other sex?" "I'm more than satisfied, so far as I come in on the deal," Oliver assured her. "I thank you, sir. And now I've been accused to my face of throwing myself at you--which expression means a lot and which you doubtless fully understand." "Who is your accuser?" "The author of 'Jessamy, My Sweetheart.'" "Digger Foss, eh?" She closed both eyes tightly and bobbed her head up and down several times, then opened her eyes. "He's a free man again--tried and acquitted." "No!" "Didn't I tell you how it would be?" He puffed his cigarette meditatively. "Doesn't it strike you as strange that you and I were not subpoenaed as witnesses?" "I've been expecting that from you. No, sir--it doesn't. Digger's counsel didn't want you and me as witnesses." "But the prosecuting attorney." "_He_ didn't want us either." "Then there's corruption."