o on her hair, shone softly in her triumphant
eyes. A long time she stood looking towards the great ocean, then she
turned to the cottage. "A pencil and paper, and a little practice and
the thing is done."

CHAPTER NINE

The Rio Vista was the famous hostelry of Ysleta. With full appreciation
of the truth of the old adage that the path to a man's heart leads
through his stomach, the promoters of the Ysleta boom had built a
gorgeous edifice and equipped it with a cuisine not equalled west of the
Mississippi. It is true that their artistic palates were not so finely
educated as were their gastronomic, but the glitter of plate glass
windows and the constant warfare of hostile colors, affected not at all
the delicate viands which were placed before the guests. Since her
connection with the Las Cruces, Helen Lonsdale had made this palace her
home.

As she ascended the steps of the Rio Vista, after her return from the
Berl ranch, Helen's attention was attracted to an old man who was seated
near the head of the broad stone steps that led to the broader verandah.
He seemed utterly out of harmony with his surroundings. His clothes were
not shabby, but they were evidently worn more with an eye to the useful
than to the ornamental. The heavy boots were wrinkled and worn, yet
solid, and the blacking suggested a reluctant concession to custom
rather than to a sense of propriety. His trousers were baggy and his
coat hung in loose folds from a pair of broad, square shoulders. A white
shirt was topped by a high old-fashioned collar, held by a flowing tie
of navy blue. These incongruities, in sharp contrast to the finished
specimens of well-groomed humanity who circled around him, first
attracted Helen. It was the face that compelled from her more than a
passing notice.

As she looked at the face, more especially the eyes, a sense of relief
from oppression, an almost irresistible impulse to laughter came over
her. It was not ridicule, but a light-hearted response to the contagious
humor radiating from every line and wrinkle. Yet the weathered face,
with its closely-cropped fringe of gray beard, resting like a sphere on
the sharp lips of the high collar, carried the conviction that the
mobile lines could set hard as frozen metal, that the humorous eyes,
deep beneath overhanging brows, could pierce like sharpened steel.
Perhaps it was her imagination, but the eyes seemed to answer her own
and the face to turn as as she passed,