hing came from the
settlement, they must have set out as soon as it was light, she
decided that their business was probably urgent. Laying down the
frying-pan in which she was making flapjacks, she moved toward the
door, and stood watching two men ride across the clearing in the
direction of the house. They did not belong to the settlement, for she
had never seen either of them before, a fact which made it clear that
they had not ridden in from the canyon. She had quick eyes, and she
noticed that, although they could not have ridden very far that
morning, their horses appeared jaded, which suggested that they had
made a long journey the previous day. The men appeared weary, too, and
she imagined that they were not accustomed to the Bush.

As she watched them she wondered with a trace of uneasiness what their
business could be, and decided that it was, perhaps, as well that her
father was busy in the stable, where he could not hear them arrive.
Since Gordon usually called at the ranch when he went down to the
settlement, she was more or less acquainted with what was being done
at the canyon and with Nasmyth's affairs, and she was on her guard when
one of the strangers pulled his horse up close in front of her.

"Can we hire a couple of horses here?" he asked. "Ours are played
out."

There was then a cayuse pony in Waynefleet's stable, but it belonged
to a neighbouring rancher, and Laura had no intention of handing it
over to the strangers.

"I'm afraid not," she answered. "The only horse on the ranch does not
belong to us, and I wouldn't care to hire it out unless I had
permission. Besides, I may want it myself. You could have obtained
horses at the settlement hotel."

"We didn't put up there."

"But you must have come through the settlement. You have evidently
ridden in from the railroad."

The man laughed. "Well," he admitted, "we certainly did, but we got
off the trail last night, and they took us in at Bullen's ranch. Soon
after we started out a chopper told us we could save a league by
riding up the valley instead of by the settlement. Does the man you
said the horse belonged to live in the neighbourhood?"

Laura did not answer immediately. She was quick-witted, and she
recognized that, while the man's explanation was plausible, there were
weak points in it. For one thing, the previous night had not been
dark, and it was difficult to understand how anyone could have
wandered off the wide trail to the sett