an American husband, and here, this young man
with the Spanish-American name and the Spanish-Saxon physique, and a
voice that showed training and faltered over the pronouncing of the
"Hilliard" as though he expected it to be too well remembered. Had there
been some mention in the paper of a son?--a son in the West?--a son under
a cloud of some sort? But--she checked her spinning of romance--this
youth was too genuine a cowboy, the way he rode, the way he moved, held
himself, his phrases, his turn of speech! With all that wealth behind him
how had he been allowed to grow up like this? No, her notion was
unreasonable, almost impossible. Although dismissed, it hung about her
mental presentment of him, however, like a rather baleful aura, not
without fascination to a seventeen-year-old imagination. So busy was she
with her fabrications that several miles of road slipped by unnoticed.
There came a strange confusion in her thoughts. It seemed to her that she
was arguing the Hilliard case with some one. Then with a horrible start
she saw that the face of her opponent was Sylvester's and she pushed it
violently away....

"Don't you go to sleep," said Hilliard softly, laughing a little. "You
might fall off."

"I--I was asleep," Sheila confessed, in confusion at discovering that her
head had dropped against him. "How dark it's getting! We're in the
valley, aren't we?"

"Yes, ma'am, we're most there." He hesitated. "Miss Arundel, I think I'd
best let you get down just before we get to Rusty."

"Get down? Why?"

He cleared his throat, half-turning to her. In the dusky twilight, that
was now very nearly darkness, his face was troubled and ashamed, like the
face of a boy who tries to make little of a scrape. "Well, ma'am,
yesterday, the folks in Rusty kind of lost their heads. They had a bad
case of Sherlock Holmes. I bought a horse up the valley from a chap who
was all-fired anxious to sell him, and before I knew it I was playing the
title part in a man-hunt. It seems that I was riding one of a string this
chap had rustled from several of the natives. They knew the horse and
that was enough for their nervous system. They had never set eyes on me
before and they wouldn't take my word for my blameless past. They told me
to keep my story for trial when they took me over to the court. Meanwhile
they gave me a free lodging in their pen. Miss Arundel--" Hilliard
dropped his ironic tone and spoke in a low, tense voice of child-like
h