Wonder what the V stands for?"

At any rate the hand had been skilfully treated and bandaged; he nodded
at it approvingly. Then, with his meal set before him, he divided his
thoughts pretty evenly between the girl and the recent shooting at the
Casa Blanca. The sense was strong upon him as it had been many a time
that before very long either Rod Norton or Jim Galloway would lie as
the sheepman from Las Palmas was lying, while the other might watch his
sunrises and sunsets with a strange, new emotion of security.

The sheriff, who had not eaten for twelve hours, was beginning his meal
when the newest stranger in San Juan came into the dining-room. She
had arranged her lustrous copper-brown hair becomingly, and looked
fresh and cool and pretty. Norton approved of her with his keen eyes
while he watched her go to her place at a table across the room. As
she sat down, giving no sign of having noted him, her back toward him,
he continued to observe and to admire her slender, perfect figure and
the strong, sensitive hands busied with her napkin.

A slovenly, half-grown Indian girl, Anita, the cook's daughter, came in
from the kitchen, directed the slumbrous eyes of her race upon the
sheriff who fitted well in a woman's eye, and went to serve the single
other late diner. Norton caught a fleeting view of V. D. Page's throat
and cheek as she turned slightly in speaking with Anita. As the
serving-maid withdrew Norton rose to his feet and crossed the room to
the far table.

"May I bring my things over and eat with you?" he asked when he stood
looking down on her and she had lifted her eyes curiously to his. "If
you've come to stay you can't go on forever not knowing anybody here,
you know. Since you've got to know us sooner or later why not begin to
get acquainted? Here and now and with me? I'm Roderick Norton."

One must have had far less discernment than she not to have felt
instinctively that the great bulk of human conventions would shrivel
and vanish before they could come this far across the desert lands.
Besides, the man standing over her looked straight and honestly into
her eyes and for a little she glimpsed again the youth of him veiled by
the sternness his life had set into his soul and upon his face.

"It is kind of you to have pity upon me in my isolation," she answered
lightly and without hesitation. "And, to tell the truth, I never was
so terribly lonesome in all my life."

He made two trips bac