dly
and confidently waited for her. Fool he was to think she would come.
Ellen sank down and dropped her head until the strange tremor of her
arms ceased. That dark and grim flash of thought retreated. She had
not come to murder a man from ambush, but only to watch him, to try to
see what he meant, what he thought, to allay a strange curiosity.

After a while she looked again. Isbel was sitting on an upheaved
section of the Rim, in a comfortable position from which he could watch
the openings in the forest and gaze as well across the west curve of
the Basin to the Mazatzals. He had composed himself to wait. He was
clad in a buckskin suit, rather new, and it certainly showed off to
advantage, compared with the ragged and soiled apparel Ellen
remembered. He did not look so large. Ellen was used to the long,
lean, rangy Arizonians and Texans. This man was built differently. He
had the widest shoulders of any man she had ever seen, and they made
him appear rather short. But his lithe, powerful limbs proved he was
not short. Whenever he moved the muscles rippled. His hands were
clasped round a knee--brown, sinewy hands, very broad, and fitting the
thick muscular wrists. His collar was open, and he did not wear a
scarf, as did the men Ellen knew. Then her intense curiosity at last
brought her steady gaze to Jean Isbel's head and face. He wore a cap,
evidently of some thin fur. His hair was straight and short, and in
color a dead raven black. His complexion was dark, clear tan, with no
trace of red. He did not have the prominent cheek bones nor the
high-bridged nose usual with white men who were part Indian. Still he
had the Indian look. Ellen caught that in the dark, intent, piercing
eyes, in the wide, level, thoughtful brows, in the stern impassiveness
of his smooth face. He had a straight, sharp-cut profile.

Ellen whispered to herself: "I saw him right the other day. Only, I'd
not admit it.... The finest-lookin' man I ever saw in my life is a
damned Isbel! Was that what I come out heah for?"

She lowered herself once more and, folding her arms under her breast,
she reclined comfortably on them, and searched out a smaller peephole
from which she could spy upon Isbel. And as she watched him the new
and perplexing side of her mind waxed busier. Why had he come back?
What did he want of her? Acquaintance, friendship, was impossible for
them. He had been respectful, deferential toward her, in a way t