Before she had taken her seat she had three engagements to dance.  Jim Yeager had waylaid her; so, too, had Slim and Curly.  She waltzed first with Phil, and after he had done his duty he left her to the besiegings of half a score of riders for various ranches who came and went and came again.  She joked with them, joined the merry banter that went on, laughed at them when they grew sentimental, always with a sprightly devotion to the matter in hand.

Nevertheless, though they did not know it, her mind was full of him who had not yet appeared.  Why was he late?  Could he have missed the way by any chance?  And later—­as the hours passed without bringing him—­could anything have happened to him?  More than once her troubled gaze fell upon Brill Healy with a brooding question in it.  The man had received only the day before his party’s nomination for sheriff, and he was doing the gracious to all the women and children.

He had many of the qualities that make for popularity, even though he was often overbearing, revengeful, and sullen.  When he chose he could be hail fellow well met in a way Malpais found flattering to its vanity.  Now he was apparently having the time of his life.  Wherever he moved an eddy of laughter and gayety went with him.  The eyes of men as well as women admiringly followed his dark, lithe, picturesque figure.

Phyllis had declined to dance with him, giving as an excuse a full programme, and for an instant his face had blazed with the suppressed rage in him.  He had bowed and swaggered away with a malicious sneer.  Her judgment told her it was folly to connect this man with the absence of her lover, but that look of malevolent triumph had none the less shaken her heart.  What had he meant?  It seemed less a threat for the future than a gloating over some evil already done.

When she could endure them no longer she carried her fears to Jim Yeager.  They were dancing, but she made an excuse of fatigue to drop out.

“First time I ever knew you to play out at a dance, Phyl,” he rallied her.

“It isn’t that.  I want to say something to you,” she whispered.

He had a guess what it was, for his own mind was not quite easy.

“Do you think anything could have happened, Jim?” she besought pitifully when for a moment they were alone in a corner.

“What could have happened, Phyllie?  Do you reckon he fell off his hawss, and him a full-size man?” he scoffed.

“Yes, but—­you don’t know how Brill looked at me.  I’m afraid.”

“Oh, Brill!” His voice held an edge of scorn, but none the less it concealed a real fear.  He was making as much concession to it as to her when he added lightly:  “Tell you what I’ll do, Phyl.  I’ll saddle up and take a look back over the Bear Creek trail.  Likely I’ll meet him, and we’ll come in together.”

Her eyes met his, and he needed no other thanks.  “You’ll lose the dance,” was her only comment.