. Words and names that had to do with unknown
places were vague things to her.

"Yes?" she answered politely, "I make no doubt you've come far. Come
in. Dinner'll soon be ready," and she moved back from the door with a
smile that covered her pitiful ignorance as with a garment of gold.
When Tharon smiled like that she was wholly adorable, and the man knew
it at once.

Why she had so quickly invited him in before he had fully declared
himself, she did not know, unless it was because of that lack in her
which his first words had implied.

Old Anita, whose manners were the simple and perfect ones of the
Mexican coupled to a kindly heart, had taught her how to comport.

Her easy and constant association with the riders and _vaqueros_ had
dulled her somewhat, but she could be royal on occasion.

Now she simply stepped back in the deep cool room where the _ollas_
swung in the windows, smiled--and she was changed entirely from the
girl of a few moments before.

The man came in, laid his hat on the flat top of the melodeon, walked
over to a chair and sat down. There was an ease about him, a
taking-for-granted, that amazed Tharon beyond words.

Then he looked frankly at her and began to talk as if he had known her
always.

"I've come to live in Lost Valley, Miss Last," he said, "for a long
while, I think. Wish me luck."

"Come here to live?" said Tharon, "a settler? Goin' to homestead?"

He shook his head.

"No."

A quick suspicion seized her. Perhaps Washington was like Arizona, a
place from which they imported gun men. Only this man wore no gun, and
he had not a look of prowess. No. This man was different.

"Then what you goin' to do?" she asked as frankly as a child.

"First," he said, "I'm going up where the pines grow yonder and build
myself a house," and he waved a hand toward the east where the ranges
rolled up to the thickening fringes of the forest that marched back
into the ramparts of the trail-less hills.

"I want to find an ideal spot, a glade where the pines stand round the
edges, with a spring of living water running down, and where I can
look down and over the magnificent reaches of Lost Valley. I shall
make me a home, and then I shall work."

"Ride?" asked the girl succinctly.

"Ride? Of course, that will be a great part of that work."

"Who for?"

He looked at her sharply.

"Who for?"

"Yes. What outfit?"

There was a hard quality in her voice. If he had come in to ride for
Courtr