masking their habitual sternness. "If you'll excuse me again, and if
you don't know a whole lot about this country . . ." He paused to
measure her sweepingly, seemed satisfied, and concluded: "I wouldn't
go out all alone like this; especially after sundown. We're a rather
tough lot, you know. Good-by."

He lifted his hat again, loosened his horse's reins, and passed by her.
Just as she had expected, just as she had desired. And yet, with his
dusty back turned upon her, she experienced a sudden return of her
loneliness. Would she ever look into the eyes of a friend again?
Could she ever actually accomplish what she had set out to accomplish;
make San Juan a home?

Her eyes followed him, frankly admiring now; so she might have looked
at any other of nature's triumphant creations. Then, before he had
gone a score of yards, she saw how a little tightening of his horse's
reins had brought the big brute down from a swinging gallop to a dead
standstill. The bell was tolling again.

Again he was calling to her, again, swinging about, he had ridden to
her side. Now his voice like his eyes, was ominously stern.

"Who is it?" he demanded.

"I don't know," she told him, marvelling at the look on his face. His
emotion was purely one of anger, mounting anger that a man was dead?
"The man who rings the bells told me that he thought it must be a
sheepman from Las Palmas. He went to see. . . . I didn't wait. . . ."

Nor did this man wait now. Again he had wheeled; now he was racing