Instantly the girl sprang to her feet, her hands upon her pistol, her eyes meeting with calm, desperate defiance the blue ones that were turned to her.  She was braced against a tree, and her senses were measuring the distance between her horse and herself, and deciding whether escape were possible.

“Good morning,” said the man politely.  “I hope I haven’t disturbed your nap.”

The girl eyed him solemnly, and said nothing.  This was a new kind of man.  He was not like the one from whom she had fled, nor like any she had ever seen; but he might be a great deal worse.  She had heard that the world was full of wickedness.

“You see,” went on the man with an apologetic smile, which lit up his eyes in a wonderfully winning way, “you led me such a desperate race nearly all day yesterday that I was obliged to keep you in sight when I finally caught you.”

He looked for an answering smile, but there was none.  Instead, the girl’s dark eyes grew wide and purple with fear.  He was the same one, then, that she had seen in the afternoon, the voice who had cried to her; and he had been pursuing her.  He was an enemy, perhaps, sent by the man from whom she fled.  She grasped her pistol with trembling fingers, and tried to think what to say or do.

The young man wondered at the formalities of the plains.  Were all these Western maidens so reticent?

“Why did you follow me?  Who did you think I was?” she asked breathlessly at last.

“Well, I thought you were a man,” he said; “at least, you appeared to be a human being, and not a wild animal.  I hadn’t seen anything but wild animals for six hours, and very few of those; so I followed you.”

The girl was silent.  She was not reassured.  It did not seem to her that her question was directly answered.  The young man was playing with her.

“What right had you to follow me?” she demanded fiercely.

“Well, now that you put it in that light, I’m not sure that I had any right at all, unless it may be the claim that every human being has upon all creation.”

His arms were folded now across his broad brown flannel chest, and the pistols gleamed in his belt below like fine ornaments.  He wore a philosophical expression, and looked at his companion as if she were a new specimen of the human kind, and he was studying her variety, quite impersonally, it is true, but interestedly.  There was something in his look that angered the girl.

“What do you want?” She had never heard of the divine claims of all the human family.  Her one instinct at present was fear.

An expression that was almost bitter flitted over the young man’s face, as of an unpleasant memory forgotten for the instant.

“It really wasn’t of much consequence when you think of it,” he said with a shrug of his fine shoulders.  “I was merely lost, and was wanting to inquire where I was—­and possibly the way to somewhere.  But I don’t know as ’twas worth the trouble.”