Howard drew out chairs at one end of the table so that the four sat together.

‘The boys will be rolling in for supper in half an hour,’ he explained.  ’But you folks are hungry and will want to get to bed early, so we are not waiting for them.’

The ‘boys’ were, supposedly, the men he had working for him; there must be close to a score of them.  And they all ate at one table, master and men and guests when he had them.

‘Who is El Joven?’ asked Helen.

Howard looked puzzled; then his face cleared.

‘Angela told you El Joven was here, too?’ And to Carr:  ’He came with you, John?’

Carr nodded.  Howard then answered Helen.

’That’s Angela’s pet name for him; it means The Youngster.  It is Barbee, Yellow Barbee the boys call him.  He’s one of John’s men.  They say he’s a regular devil-of-a-fellow with the ladies, Miss Helen.  Look out he doesn’t break your heart.’

Angela peered in from the kitchen and withdrew.  They heard her guttural utterance, and thereafter a young Indian boy, black of eyes, slick of plastered hair and snow-white of apron, came in bringing the soup.  Howard nodded at him, saying a pleasant ‘Que hay, Juanito?’ The boy uncovered the rare whiteness of his splendid teeth in a quick smile.  He began placing the soup.  Helen looked at him; he blushed and withdrew hastily to the kitchen.

Throughout the meal the four talked unconstrainedly; it was as though they had known one another for a dozen years and intimately.  Longstreet, having pushed aside his soup plate, engaged his host in an ardent discussion of the undeveloped possibilities of the Last Ridge country; true, he had never set foot upon it, but he knew the last word of this land’s formation and geological construction, its life history as it were.  All of his life, he admitted freely, he had been a man of scholarship and theory; the simplest thing imaginable, he held blandly, was the demonstration of the correctness of his theories.  Meantime Helen talked brightly with John Carr and listened to Carr’s voice.

And a voice well worth listening to it was.  Its depth was at once remarkable and pleasing.  At first one hearkened to the music of the rich tone itself rather than to the man’s words, just as one may thrill to the profound cadences of a deep voice singing without heeding the words of the song.  But presently she found herself giving her rapt attention to Carr’s remarks.  Here again was one of her own class, a man of quiet assurance and culture and distinction; he knew Boston and he knew the desert.  For the first time since her father had dragged her across the continent on his hopelessly mad escapade, Helen felt that after all the East was not entirely remote from the West.  Men like Howard and his friend John Carr, types she had never looked to find here, linked East and West.