“I tell you, Miss Waverly,” ... it was Templeton’s voice, snappy and irritable, ... “this thing is madness!  Pure and simple, unadulterated madness!  It’s as devoid of sense as a last year’s nest of birds; it’s as full of danger as a ... a ...”

“Never mind exhausting your similes, Mr. Templeton,” came the answer, the girl’s voice young and fresh and yet withal firm and a little cool.  “I didn’t come to ask your advice, you know.  And you haven’t given me what I did come for.  If you ...”

Thornton pushed the door open, sweeping off his hat as he came in, and said bluntly,

“I don’t know what you folks are talking about, but I judge it’s important.  And there’s no sense in loose-endish talk when you don’t know who’s listening.”

The square built, square faced man tapping with big square finger ends at the table in front of him whirled about suddenly, his gesture and eyes alike showing his keen annoyance at the interruption.  Then when he saw who it was he got to his feet, saying crisply: 

“I’m glad it’s you.  This young woman has got it into her head ...”

“You will remember, Mr. Templeton, that this is in strict confidence?”

Templeton’s teeth shut with a click.  Thornton turned from him and, with his spurs in one hand, his hat caught in the other, stood looking down upon the owner of the voice that was at once so fresh and young, so coolly determined and vaguely defiant.  And as he looked at her there was much speculation in his grave eyes.  Odd that he should stumble upon her the first thing.  Odd and—­natural....

The girl’s back was to him.  For a moment she did not shift her position the least fraction of an inch, but sat very still, leaning forward in her chair, facing the banker.  Then after a little when it was evident that Templeton was going to say nothing more she turned slowly to the new comer, her lashes sweeping upward swiftly as her eyes met his full and steady.  And the man from the Poison Hole ranch, his own eyes looking down into hers very gravely, noted many things in the quick, keen way characteristic of him.

He saw that her mouth, red lips about very white teeth, was smiling softly, confidently; and yet that the brown-flecked grey of her eyes was as unsmiling, as gravely speculative as his own eyes were.  He saw that her skin was a golden brown from life in the open outdoors, that she had upon the heels of her boots a pair of tiny, sharp rowelled spurs, that a riding quirt hung from her right wrist by its rawhide thong, that her cheeks were a little flushed as though from excitement but that she knew the trick of forbidding her eyes to tell what her excitement was.  He saw that her throat, where her neck scarf fell loosely away from it, was very round and white.  He saw that while her grey riding habit covered her body it hid none of her body’s grace and strength and slender youthfulness.

While his eyes left hers to note these things her eyes had been as busy, running from the man’s close cropped dark hair to his mud-spattered boots.  And there came into her look just a hint of admiration which the man did not see as she in her swift examination noted the breadth of shoulder, the straight tallness of him, the clean, supple, sinewy form which his loose attire of soft shirt, unbuttoned vest grey with dust, and shaggy chaps, black and much worn, in no way concealed.