straight back into his eyes little flashes of impressions which had fastened upon her mind during the day came back to her, things which he suggested, which were like him.  She was very tired and further she was overwrought from the nervous excitement of the evening; hence her mental processes were the quicker and more prone to fly off at wild tangents....  She had seen a tall, rugged cedar on a rocky ridge blown through by the tempest, standing out in clear relief against the sky; this man recalled the scene, the very atmosphere.  She had seen a wild swollen torrent hurtling on its way down the mountainside; the man had threatened to become like that, headlong with unbounded passion, fierce and destructive when a moment ago they opposed him....  Again she bit her lip; she was thinking of this huge male creature in hyperboles.  Yes; she was overwrought; it was not well to think thusly of any mere male creature.

And yet she but liked him the better and her fancies were smitten anew by what he did now.  Having filled his eyes with her as a man athirst may fill himself with water from a brook, he turned abruptly away and left her.  He did not tarry to say “Thank you,” that she had been almost eager in asserting her belief in his innocence.  He did not go back to a futile and perhaps quarrelsome discussion with Hap Smith and old man Adams and the rest.  He simply dropped everything where it was, shoved his big revolver out of sight under his left arm-pit and went to the long dining table.  There, his back to the room, he helped himself generously to cold meat, bread and luke-warm coffee and ate hungrily.

She sank back into her chair and let her eyes wander to his breadth of shoulder, straightness of back and even to the curl of his hair that cast its dancing shadows upon the wall in front of him.  She had never had a man turn his back on her this way, and yet now the accomplished deed struck her in nowise as boorish or rude.  He had paid her the tribute of a deep admiration, as clear and strong and unsullied as a racing mountain stream in spring time.  The few words which he deemed necessary had passed between them.  Then he had withdrawn himself from her attention.  Not rude, the act savoured somehow of the downright free bigness of unconvention.

“It’s silly, jumping to conclusions, any way,” she informed herself.  “Why suspect him just because he wears the costume of the country, has the usual red handkerchief in his possession and is tall?  There are half a dozen big red handkerchiefs in this room right now ... and this would seem to be the land of tall men.”

Only once again did he speak to her that night and then just to say in plain matter-of-fact style:  “You’d better lie down there and get some sleep.  Good night.”  And this remark had come only after fifteen minutes of busy preparation on his part and curiosity on hers.  He had gone out of the room into the night with no offered explanation and with many eyes following him; men began to show