The man whom she had watched clinging to his horse's back so desperately was not only a new-comer to the Sierra and a stranger, but a poor sort of person to be alone where there is a dearth of paved sidewalks and streets with names and numbers. He had lost himself many times since leaving El Toyon the day before, and now, with the main valley road as plain before him as a man could wish a road to be, he forsook it and came on blindly along a second road that the Echo Creek wagons had travelled last week for wood. And Wanda, riding down to the creek, met him when he had reached a state of perspiring despair. "Say!" he called shrilly when, barely in earshot, he caught his first view of her. "Say, wait a minute, won't you?" Wanda, smiling a little at the evident distress which gave her her first impression of the man, came on to meet him. She stopped Gypsy with a swift, gentle touch upon the reins, while he yanked his sweating horse about by pulling manfully at both reins held one in each hand. "Say," was his next word of greeting, "ain't this the doggondest, peskiest wild man's land you ever shot a glimmer of your eye at? Gee, ain't it fierce, lady?" Wanda's smile brightened in spite of her. He shook his head and pursed his underlip and mopped his reeking face. "I'm just in a cold sweat all over," he confided ruefully. "What with the rubbing of this saddle on the outside,--an old pirate with eyes like a young sheep and whiskers like Santa Claus robbed me of twenty bucks for it back yonder in that jay town,--and my bones inside trying to poke through the skin, I'm just peeled like a seal whose skin some flash dame is wearing for a coat. Say," with a groan as he shifted a little in the saddle which he blamed for his woes, "you don't live so awful far from here, do you?" "No," she smiled. "Just across the valley." "Nix on that!" he cried sharply, as if in sudden alarm. "They been talking that way to me ever since I got lost the eighty-second time. 'Down to a cross road,' they'd say, lying as would shame a second story man caught with the goods. 'Then turn to your right and go straight ahead and it's just a little piece.' I ain't ever hurt you, lady, and I wouldn't, not for a hundred dollars. But I'm awful sore being told it's just over yonder. How far is it, measured in something civilised, like blocks?" He was the most anxiously earnest little man Wanda had ever seen, and the most dejectedly miserable. Still vastly amused she began to feel a little sorry for him. He was such a veritable babe in the wood for helplessness. "Really, it isn't far," she assured him. "Just a trifle over three miles." "Lord," he groaned, staring at her reproachfully. "The way you folks talk about distance out here makes my flesh creep. But, say, is that the nearest place?" "Yes." "Then can I go home with you, Miss? And will you scare up something for me to eat? I'm so starved I'd eat egg shells."