Therefore, it was really not strange to her that throughout the journey her guide did not speak half a dozen words to her.  Once or twice when she attempted to open the conversation he had replied with crushing monosyllables, and there was an end.  For the rest, he was always swinging down the trail ahead of her at a steady, unchanging, rapid stride.  Uphill and down it never varied.  And so they came out upon the shoulder of the hill and saw the storm center of The Corner.  They were in the hills behind the town; two miles would bring them into it.  And now Donnegan came back to her from the mule.  He took off his hat and shook the dust away; he brushed a hand across his face.  He was still unshaven.  The red stubble made him hideous, and the dust and perspiration covered his face as with a mask.  Only his eyes were rimmed with white skin.

“You’d better get off the horse, here,” said Donnegan.

He held her stirrup, and she obeyed without a word.

“Sit down.”

She sat down on the flat-topped boulder which he designated, and, looking up, observed the first sign of emotion in his face.  He was frowning, and his face was drawn a little.

“You are tired,” he stated.

“A little.”

“You are tired,” said the wanderer in a tone that implied dislike of any denial.  Therefore she made no answer.  “I’m going down into the town to look things over.  I don’t want to parade you through the streets until I know where Landis is to be found and how he’ll receive you.  The Corner is a wild town; you understand?”

“Yes,” she said blankly, and noted nervously that the reply did not please him.  He actually scowled at her.

“You’ll be all right here.  I’ll leave the pack mule with you; if anything should happen—­but nothing is going to happen, I’ll be back in an hour or so.  There’s a pool of water.  You can get a cold drink there and wash up if you want to while I’m gone.  But don’t go to sleep!”

“Why not?”

“A place like this is sure to have a lot of stragglers hunting around it.  Bad characters.  You understand?”

She could not understand why he should make a mystery of it; but then, he was almost as strange as her father.  His careful English and his ragged clothes were typical of him inside and out.

“You have a gun there in your holster.  Can you use it?”

“Yes.”

“Try it.”

It was a thirty-two, a woman’s light weapon.  She took it out and balanced it in her hand.

“The blue rock down the hillside.  Let me see you chip it.”

Her hand went up, and without pausing to sight along the barrel, she fired; fire flew from the rock, and there appeared a white, small scar.  Donnegan sighed with relief.

“If you squeezed the butt rather than pulled the trigger,” he commented, “you would have made a bull’s-eye that time.  Now, I don’t mean that in any likelihood you’ll have to defend yourself.  I simply want you to be aware that there’s plenty of trouble around The Corner.”