But swiftly he forgot Sanchia and her vindictiveness.  She had mentioned Courtot; for a little as he rode into the hills he puzzled over Courtot’s recurrent disappearances.  He recalled how, always when he came to a place where he might expect to find the gambler, he had passed on.  Here of late he was like some sinister will-o’-the-wisp.  What was it that urged him?  A lure that beckoned?  A menace that drove?  He thought of Kish Taka.  There was a nemesis to dog any man.  Jim Courtot had dwelt with the desert Indians; he had come to know in what savage manner they meted out their retributive justice.  Was Kish Taka still unsleeping, patient, relentless on Courtot’s trail?  Kish Taka and his dog?

But his horse’s hoofs were beating out a merry music on the winding trail that led toward the Red Hill country, and at the end of the trail was Helen.  Helen had not gone East.  The frown in his eyes gave place to his smile; the sunlight was again golden and glorious; the emptiness of the world was replaced by a large content.

‘They just couldn’t stand being so close to what they had lost,’ he argued.  ‘It was a right move to come up here.’

He found the new camp without trouble.  As he entered the lower end of the tiny valley he saw the canvas-walled cabin at the farther end, under the cliffs.  He saw Helen herself.  She was just stepping out through the door.  He came racing on to her, waving his hat by way of greeting.  He slipped down from the saddle, let his bundle fall and caught both of her hands in his.

After this long, unexplained absence Helen had meant to be very stiff when, on some fine day, Alan Howard remembered to come again.  But now, under his ardent eyes, the colour ran up into her cheeks in rebellious defiance of her often strengthened determination and, though she wrenched herself free from him, something of the fire in his eyes was reflected in hers.

‘Good afternoon, Mr. Cyclone,’ she said quite as carelessly as his sudden appearance permitted her vaguely disturbed senses.  ’What are you going to do?  Run over me?’

He laughed joyously.

‘I could eat you,’ he told her enthusiastically.  ’You look just that good to me.  Lord, but I’m hungry for the sight of you!’

‘That’s nice of you to say so,’ Helen answered.  And now she was quite all that she had planned to be; as coolly indifferent as only a girl can be when something has begun to sing in her heart and she has made up her mind that no one must hear the singing.  ’But I fail to see why this very excellent imitation of a man who hasn’t seen his best friend for a couple of centuries.’

‘It has been that long, every bit of it—­longer.’

Helen’s smile was that stock smile to be employed in answer to an inconsequential compliment paid by a chance acquaintance.

‘Three or four days is hardly an eternity,’ she retorted.

‘Three or four days?  Why, it’s been over nine!  Nearly ten.’