There was the sound of a quick, light step running toward them. Morgan half turned, was caught in a grip of steel and hurled headlong among a pile of broken rocks. “Y’u would dare, would y’u?” panted his assailant, passionately, ready to obliterate the offender if he showed fight. Morgan got up slowly, his head bleeding from contact with the sharp rocks. There was murder in his bloodshot eye, but he knew his master, and after trying vainly to face him down he swung away with an oath. “I’ll have to apologize for that coyote, Miss Messiter. These fellows need a hint occasionally as to how to behave,” said Bannister. “Your hints are rather forceful, are they not?” “I ain’t running a Sunday school,” he admitted. “So I have gathered. I wonder where he learned to bully women,” she mused aloud. “Putting it another way, you think there ought to be some one to apologize for his master.” He was smiling at her without the least rancor, and it came on her with a woman’s swift instinct that safety lay in humoring his volatile moods and diverting him from those that were dangerous. “Since I’m a prisoner of war I wouldn’t dare think that—not aloud, at least. You might starve me,” she told him, saucily. “Still, down in your heart y’u think—” “That there is a great deal of difference between master and man. One is a gentleman in his best moments; the other is always a ruffian.” She had touched his vanity. As he walked beside her she could almost see his complacency purr. “I’m a miscreant, I reckon, but I was a gentleman first.” Fortunately he did not see the flash of veiled scorn she shot at him under her long lashes. With her breakfast next morning the Cheyenne woman brought a note signed “Shepherd-of-the-Desert.” In it Bannister asked permission to pay his respects. The girl divined that he was in his better mood, and penciled on his note the favor she could scarce refuse. But she was scarcely prepared for the impudent air of jocund spring he brought into her prison, the gay assumption of _camaraderie_ so inconsistent with the facts. Yet since safety lay in an avoidance of the tragic, she set herself to match his mood. At sight of the open Tennyson on the table he laughed and quoted: She only said, “The day is dreary.” “He cometh not,” she said. “But, you see, he comes,” he added. “What say, Mariana of the Robbers’ Roost, to making a picnic day of it? We’ll climb the Crags and lunch on the summit.” “The Crags?” “That Matterhorn-shaped peak that begins at our back door. Are you for it?” While this mood was uppermost in him she felt reasonably safe. It was a phase of him she certainly did not mean to discourage. Besides, she had a youthful confidence in her powers that she was loath to give up without an effort to find the accessible side of his ruthless heart. “I’ll try it; but you must help me when we come to the bad places,” she said. “Sure thing! It’s a deal. You’re a right good mountaineer, I’ll bet.”