Orlando had little evil in his nature; his eyes did not look towards
Tralee as did Burlingame's eyes. Nothing furtive stirred in Orlando's
intensely blue eyes. Whatever the feeling was, it was an open thing,
which had neither motive nor purpose behind it--just a thing almost
feminine in its nature. As yet it was like the involuntary adoration
which girls at a certain period of their lives feel successively for
one hero after another. What it would become, who could tell? What would
happen to the young girl adoring the actor, or the hero of the North
Pole, the battle-field or the sea, if the adored one was not far off,
but very near? Indeed, who could tell?

But as it was, in the upper room where Louise sat all day looking out
over the prairie, and on the prairie where business carried Orlando
from ranch to ranch on this perfect day, no recreant thought or feeling
existed. Each was a simple soul, as yet unspoiled and in one sense
unsophisticated--the girl, however, with an instinctive caution, such as
an animal possesses in the presence of a foe with which it is in truce;
the man with an astuteness which belonged to a native instinct for
finding a way of doing hard things in the battle of life.

All day Orlando wondered when he should see that face again; all day the
eyes of Louise pleaded for another look at the ranchman with the dress
of a dandy, the laugh of a child, and the face of an Apollo--or so it
seemed to her. It was the sort of day which ministers to human emotion,
which stirs the sluggish blood, revives the drooping spirit. There was
a curious, delicate blueness of the sky over which an infinitely more
delicate veil of mist was softly drawn. At many places on the prairie
the haymakers were loading the great wagons; here and there a fallow
field was burning; yonder a house was building; cattle were being
rounded up; and far off, like moving specks, ranchmen were climbing
the hills where the wild bronchos were, for a day of the toughest, most
thrilling sport which the world knows.

Night fell, and found Orlando making for the trail between what was
known as the Company's Ranch and Tralee. To reach his own ranch, he had
to cross it at an angle near the Tralee homestead. It was dark, with no
moon, but the stars were bright.

As he crossed the Tralee trail, he suddenly heard a cry for help.
Between him and where the sound came from was a fire burning. It was
the camp-fire of some prairie pioneer making for a n