They rode through a valley of gold and russet, all warm with yellow sunlight.  In front of them, the Spur projected from the hill ridge into the mountain park.

“Then I think you’re a cow-puncher looking for a job, but not very anxious to find one,” she was hazarding, answering a question.

“No.  That leaves you one more guess.”

“That forces me to believe that you are what you say you are,” she mocked; “just a plain, prosaic homesteader.”

She had often considered in her mind what business might be his, that could wait while he lingered week after week and rode trail with the cowboys; but it had not been the part of hospitality to ask questions of her friend.  This might seem to imply a doubt, and of doubt she had none.  To-day, he himself had broached the subject.  Having brought it up, he now dropped it for the time.

He had shaded his eyes, and was gazing at something that held his attention—­a little curl of smoke, rising from the wash in front of them.

“What is it?” she asked, impatient that his mind could so easily be diverted from her.

“That is what I’m going to find out.  Stay here!”

Rifle in hand, Keller slipped forward through the brush.  His imperative “Stay here!” annoyed her just a little.  She uncased her rifle, dropped from the saddle as he had done, and followed him through the cacti.  Her stealthy advance did not take her far before she came to the wash.

There Keller was standing, crouched like a panther ready for the spring, quite motionless and silent—­watching now the bushes that fringed the edge of the wash, and now the smoke spiral rising faintly from the embers of a fire.

Slowly the man’s tenseness relaxed.  Evidently he had made up his mind that death did not lurk in the bushes, for he slid down into the wash and stepped across to the fire.  Phyllis started to follow him, but at the first sound of slipping rubble her friend had her covered.

“I told you not to come,” he reproached, lowering his rifle as soon as he recognized her.

“But I wanted to come.  What is it?  Why are you so serious?”

His eyes were busy making an inventory of the situation, his mind, too, was concentrated on the thing before him.

“Do you think it is rustlers?  Is that what you mean?” she asked quickly.

“Wait a minute and I’ll tell you what I think.”  He finished making his observations and returned to her.  “First, I’ll tell you something else, something that nobody in the neighborhood knows but you and Jim Yeager.  I belong to the ranger force.  Lieutenant O’Connor sent me here to clean up this rustling that has been going on for several years.”

“And a lot of the boys thought you were a rustler yourself,” she commented.

“So did one or two of the young ladies,” he smiled.  “But that is not the business before this meeting.  Because I’m trained to it I notice things you wouldn’t.  For instance, I saw a man the other day with a horse whose hind hoof left a trail like that.”