She halted when she saw them, and they jerked up their horses also, with startled suddenness, like men riding in the expectation of danger and surprise. Macdonald came forward in a moment, with respectful salute, a look amounting almost to frightened questioning in his face. For the sun was not up yet, although its flame was on the heavens, and it was a strange, wild place to meet a woman of Frances Landcraft's caste unattended, and with the shadow of a trouble in her face that made it old, like misery. But there was no question of the unfriendliness of that face for Alan Macdonald and the men who came riding at his back. It was as cold as the gray earth beneath her horse's hoofs, and its severity was reflected in the very pose of her body, even in the grip of her slender thighs as they clasped her saddle, sitting there like a dragoon outrider who had appeared to bar their way. Frances was wearing the brown corduroy riding-habit that she had worn on the day when she first spoke to him. Her brown hair had fallen down until it hid her ears, for she had ridden hard, and a strand of it blew from beneath her cowboy hat in unheeded caress across her cheek. Macdonald saw her stiffen in the saddle and lift herself a little from her seat as he drew near, his companions stopping a little distance back. Her eyes were stern and reproachful; a little frown troubled her white forehead. "I was starting out to find you, Mr. Macdonald," she said, severely. "If there is any service, Miss Landcraft--" "Don't talk emptiness, and don't pretend!" she said, a flash of anger in her face. "It isn't a man's way to fight, it's a coward's! Bring her back home!" "I don't know what you mean." There was such an astonished helplessness in his manner that it would have convinced any unprejudiced mind of his innocence in itself. "Oh!"--impatiently--"I can't hurt you, I'm alone. You'd just as well tell me how much money you're going to demand, so I can set their minds at rest." Macdonald's face was hot; his eyes felt as if they swam in fire. He put out his hand in a gesture almost a command, his heavy eyebrows gathered in a frown, an expression of sternness in his homely face that made it almost majestic. "If you'll be good enough to tell me what your veiled accusations point to, Miss Landcraft, then I can answer you by either yes or no." She unbent so far as to relate briefly what she believed they knew better than herself already. But behind her high air as she talked there was a secret warm feeling for the strength of this man. It was a quality of fine steel in the human mind and body such as she never had seen so beautifully blended before. In her own father there was something of it, but only a reflection on water compared to this. It seemed the temper of the desert, she thought, like that oriental spirit which spread Islam's dark creed over half the world.