the eyes leaped the rock-strewn bed of the Rio Sangre de
Cristo, climbed rock-ribbed, wooded slopes, up and up to the dizzy
snow-clad peaks of the San Bernardinos that rested purple and white
against the constant azure of a California sky. Within the limits of the
cottage, the flower garden, and the irrigated orange grove, the sun
seemed to hold its fierceness in awesome leash only to let loose its
fervid power upon the glowing sands and their tortured growths.

The characters were in harmony with their setting. The blue-eyed little
woman, delicate, with tawny hair, a sweet-scented mountain gentian ready
to shrink and fold upon itself at a shadow that could not harm, but
could only feebly threaten; the young engineer, with close-cropped hair,
a face chiselled with strong, undoubting strokes, a mouth half hidden by
a mustache that gave a glimpse of lips too thick to be merciless, too
thin to be sensuous. There was an air of alertness about the man, a
suggested tireless energy that renewed its strength on the food of humor
gathered even from the most monotonous commonplaces. Ralph Winston was
not a rare type of man, but he was a saving one. With him was an air of
inflexibility of purpose, softened with mercy; a rugged honesty that
made no compromise with evil-doers, an honesty that, with laughing eyes,
left the uncovered sinner ashamed and repentant, instead of defiant and
revengeful in his defeat.

A tyro, looking at the smooth-shaven, boyish face of Elijah Berl, would
fail to note the hardly defined lines that ran from mouth to eyes; lines
broad, undulating through the whole gamut of enthusiasm, but lines that
grew hard and merciless as they converged to eyes narrowed before
opposition and lightened with fanatical zeal.

Winston's footing with the Berls was intimate, though upon short
acquaintance. This was not strange in California. Twenty miles from the
Berl ranch was a booming town that had attracted Winston. Here was a
good opening for an engineer, with large and sure pay. Winston made
light of the town and its promoters, and among these he had no
intimates. On a hunting trip he had discovered the Berl ranch and had
found it worthy of the more intimate acquaintance to which he was
cordially invited. Little by little he had drawn from Elijah the story
of his life in California. It had been an isolated life, full of
hardship, but devoted to a single idea, that of reclaiming the vast
extent of country which now lay b