‘How a man could own this,’ she said slowly, ’and then could sell it——­’ She shook her head and looked at him half wonderingly.  ’I don’t see how you could do it.’

‘You feel that way about it, too?’ He brought his eyes back soberly to his cigar.

Howard, whose swinging stride Helen had learned to know already, came out from the living-room, hat in hand, carrying a pair of spurs he had been tinkering with.

‘What are you talking about?’ he laughed.  ‘Somebody dead?’

‘Miss Longstreet was saying,’ Carr said quietly, his eyes still grave, ’that she couldn’t understand a man selling an outfit like this, once he had called it his own.’

‘Good for you, Miss Helen,’ cried Howard heartily.  ’I am with you on that.  John, there, must have been out of his senses when he let me talk him out of Desert Valley.’

‘I don’t know but that I was,’ said Carr.

Howard looked at him swiftly, and swiftly the light in his eyes altered.  For Carr had spoken thoughtfully and soberly, and there was no hint of jest in the man.

‘You don’t mean, John,’ said Alan, a trifle uncertainly, ’that you are sorry you let go?  That you are not satisfied——­’

Carr appeared to be considering the matter as though it were enwrapped in his cigar.  He took ample time in replying, so much time, in fact, that Helen found herself growing impatient for his reply.

‘Suppose I were sorry?’ he said finally.  ’Suppose I were not satisfied?  Then what?  The deal is made, and a bargain, old-timer, is a bargain.’

Now it was Howard’s turn for silence and sober eyes.  He looked intently into his friend’s face; then with a lingering affection across his broad lands.

‘Not between friends,’ he said.  ’Not between friends like you and me, John.  I’ve hardly got my hooks into it; you had it long enough for it to get to be a part of you.  If you made a mistake in selling, if you know it now——­’ He shrugged and smiled.  ’Why, of course it doesn’t mean as much to me as to you, and anyway, it’s yours until I get all my payments made, and if you say the word——­’

‘Well?’ asked Carr steadily.

‘Why,’ cried Howard, ’we’ll frame a new deal this very minute and you can take it over again!’

‘You’d do that for me, Al?’

‘You’re damned well right, I would!’ cried Howard heartily.  And Helen understood that for the moment at least he had forgotten that she was present.

A slow smile came into Carr’s eyes.

’That’s square shooting, Long Boy.’—­he spoke more impetuously than Helen had thought the man could—­’but I never went back on a play yet, did I?  I’m just sort of homesick for the old place, that’s all.  Forget it.’  He slapped Howard upon the shoulder, the two friends’ eyes met for a moment of utter understanding and he went on down to the stable, calling back, ’I’m going to take the best horse you’ve got—­that would be Bel and no other—­and ride.  So long.’