think?"

She readjusted her spectacles. After a time she gazed from the
pictures through the window at the stretch of sagebrush.

"And I'll have neighbours, too," she said, in an unsteady voice. "The
loneliness here was killing me."

Stevenson considered the backs of his hands in awkward silence.

"Neighbours, lots of them," Bryant affirmed.

"I kind of pity you having to stay," she said, looking up at him with
a smile.

The engineer laughed.

"Why, this country suits me right down to the ground," he replied.
"I've been in the West ten years, wouldn't live anywhere else. And I
don't expect to be lonely; Menocal will probably attend to that.
Besides, there are two good-looking young ladies just south of here,
on Sarita Creek."

"That's so," she said, laughing also.

"First thing we hear, you'll be married," Stevenson remarked, with a
quick grin.

"Oh, I'm safe--there are two of them," Bryant returned, clapping the
rancher on the shoulder.