“Well, little girl,” said he, “where to this afternoon?”

When Sheila rode her pony she always rode toward The Hill.  But in that direction she had never allowed Sylvester to take her.  She looked vaguely through the wind-shield now and said, “Anywhere—­that canon, the one we came home by last week.  It was so queer.”

“It’ll be dern dusty, I’m afraid.”

“I don’t care.”  Sheila wrapped her gray veil over her small hat which fitted close about her face.  “I’m getting used to the dust.  Does it ever rain around Millings?  And does it ever stop blowing?”

“We don’t like Millings to-day, do we?”

Sylvester was bending his head to peer through the gray mist of her veil.  She held herself stiffly beside him, showing the profile of a small Sphinx.  Suddenly it turned slightly, seemed to wince back.  Girlie, at the gate of Number 18 Cottonwood Avenue, had stopped to watch them pass.  Girlie did not speak.  Her face looked smitten, the ripe fruit had turned bitter upon her ruddy lips.  The tranquil emptiness of her beauty had filled itself stormily.

Sheila did not answer Hudson’s reproachful question.  She leaned back, dropped back, rather, into a tired little heap and let the country slide by—­the strange, wide, broken country with its circling mesas, its somber grays and browns and dusty greens, its bare purple hills, rocks and sand and golden dirt, and now and then, in the sudden valley bottoms, swaying groves of vivid green and ribbons of emerald meadows.  The mountains shifted and opened their canons, gave a glimpse of their beckoning and forbidding fastnesses and closed them again as though by a whispered Sesame.

“What was the row last night?” asked Sylvester in his voice of cracked tenderness.  “Carthy says there was a bunch of toughs.  Were you scared good and plenty?  I’m sorry.  It don’t happen often, believe me.

“I wish you could ‘a’ heard Carthy talkin’ about you, Sheila,” went on Sylvester, his eyes, filled with uneasiness, studying her silence and her huddled smallness, hands in the pockets of her light coat, veiled face turned a little away, “Say, that would ‘a’ set you up all right!  Talk about beacons!”

Here she flashed round on him, as though her whole body had been electrified.  “Tell me all that again,” she begged in a voice that he could not interpret except that there was in it a sound of tears.  “Tell me again about a beacon ...”

He stammered.  He was confused.  But stumblingly he tried to fulfill her demand.  Here was a thirst for something, and he wanted above everything in the world to satisfy it.  Sheila listened to him with unsteady, parted lips.  He could see them through the veil.

“You still think I am that?” she asked.

He was eager to prove it to her.  “Still think?  Still think?  Why, girl, I don’t hev to think.  Don’t the tillbox speak for itself?  Don’t Carthy handle a crowd that’s growing under his eyes?  Don’t we sell more booze in a week now than we used to in a—­” Suddenly he realized that he was on the wrong tack.  It was his first break.  He drew in a sharp breath and stopped, his face flushing deeply.