suppose."

"That is what I meant to say."

"Come. One good turn deserves another. What about this?" She nodded toward
the dead cow.

"I have not seen a thing I ought not to have seen."

"Didn't you see me blot a brand on that calf?"

He shook his head. "Can't recall it at all, Miss Lee."

Swiftly her keen glance raked him again. Judged by his clothes, he was one
of the world's ineffectives, flotsam tossed into the desert by the wash of
fate; but there was that in the steadiness of his eye, in the set of his
shoulders, in the carriage of his lean-loined, slim body that spoke of
breeding. He was no booze-fighting grubliner. Disguised though he was in
cheap slops, she judged him a man of parts. He would do to trust,
especially since she could not help herself.

"We'll be going. You take my horse," she ordered.

"And let you walk?"

"How long since you have eaten?" she asked brusquely.

"About seven minutes," he smiled.

"But before that?"

"Two days."

"Well, then. Anybody can see you're as weak as a kitten. Do as I say."

"Why can't we both ride?"

"We can as soon as we get across the pass. Until then I'll walk."

Erect as a willow sapling, she took the hills with an elastic ease that
showed her deep-bosomed in spite of her slenderness. The short corduroy
riding skirt and high-laced boots were made for use, not grace, but the
man in the saddle found even in her manner of walking the charm of her
direct, young courage. Free of limb, as yet unconscious of sex, she had
the look of a splendid boy. The descending sun was in her sparkling hair,
on the lank, undulating grace of her changing lines.

Active as a cat though it was, the cowpony found the steep pass with its
loose rubble hard going. Melissy took the climb much easier. In the way
she sped through the mesquit, evading the clutch of the cholla by supple
dips to right and left, there was a kind of pantherine litheness.

At the summit she waited for the horse to clamber up the shale after her.

"Get down in your collar, you Buckskin," she urged, and when the pony was
again beside her petted the animal with little love pats on the nose.

Carelessly she flung at Diller a question. "From what part of the East did
you say?"

He was on the spot promptly this time. "From Keokuk."

"Keokuk, Indiana?"

"Iowa," he smiled.

"Oh, is it Iowa?" He had sidestepped her little trap, but she did not give
up. "Just arrived?"

"I've been herding sheep for a