‘You’ll keep your hands off my affairs, Mr. Alan Howard,’ she said evenly.  ‘Or I’ll spoil every dream of your life.’

He held back his answer, his throat working.  He saw the forsaken spurs and bridle near the bower which John Carr had constructed; he saw the sunlight and shadow across the trail down which Helen had vanished.  Then, his own spurs clanking to his long strides, he too went down the trail, his back and shoulders to Sanchia, stiff and belligerent.

Helen was in the cabin, the door closed.  He called, and she did not answer.  He could hear her within, rummaging about, evidently very busy with something or other; had it not been for the little snatch of song which came out to him he could have thought that she was in the grip of a frenzy no less than that riding him.  He rapped on the door and called again.

‘Is that you, papa?’ Helen’s song was suspended briefly.

‘No,’ answered Howard.  ‘Won’t you let me have a word with you?’

‘I’d love to,’ she rejoined.  ’But I’m terribly busy just now.  I’ll be out in a minute.’  And again he heard her humming and stirring about.

He tried to open the door.  It was locked.  He turned away and sat down on the doorstep.

‘I’ll wait here,’ he told her.  ’I’ll wait all day and all night if I have to.’

But there is nothing harder than an indefinite waiting.  He saw that Sanchia still sat upon her white mare where he had left her, that her head was bent, and she seemed to be in a profound study.  Now and then he heard Helen; she appeared to be re-arranging their scant furnishings.  Ten minutes passed.  He called softly: 

‘Aren’t you coming out, Helen?’

‘Presently.’  By now Helen had commanded and subdued her agitation entirely to her own satisfaction.  ’I know it seems rude, but I simply must get a few things done.’

‘What sort of things?  Can’t I help you?’

‘Help?’ She laughed.  ’Men are such funny animals when it is a matter of helping indoors.

Sanchia had just said men were such fools.  Well, come right down to it, he was rather inclined to accept the statement as largely true.  And women were so utterly beyond comprehension.

‘Anyway, can’t I just come in and watch you?’

He wondered why she should seem so highly amused.

‘In this little house you always seem about seven feet tall,’ she laughed at him.  ’You’d be terribly in my way.  And you haven’t waited half a day yet, let alone all night.’

He saw that Sanchia had suddenly lifted her head and had jerked her horse about in the trail.  But she was not riding this way.  She had turned toward the cliffs and was waving her hand.  Then he saw Longstreet, grotesque in the various bits of Western accoutrement which he had incorporated into his wardrobe, humorously militant as to swinging revolver, miner’s pick in hand, high-booted and red-shirted.