A less vivid imagination than Helen’s would have found a tang of ghostliness in the night.  The crest of the ridge over which they had come through the dusk now showed silvery white; white also were some dead branches of desert growth—­they looked like bones.  Always through the intense silence stirred an indistinguishable breath like a shiver.  Individual bushes assumed grotesque shapes; when she looked long and intently at one she began to fancy that it moved.  She scoffed at herself, knowing that she was lending aid to tricking her own senses, yet her heart beat a wee bit faster.  She gave her mind to large considerations:  those of infinity, as her eyes were lifted heavenward and dwelt upon the brightest star; those of life and death, and all of the mystery of mysteries.  She went to sleep struggling with the ancient problem:  ’Do the dead return?  Are there, flowing about us, weird, supernatural influences as potent and intangible as electric currents?’ In her sleep she continued her interesting investigations, but her dreaming vision explained the evening’s problem by showing her the camp-fire made, the bacon and coffee set thereon, by a very nice young man with splendid eyes.

She stirred, smiled sleepily, and lay again without moving; after the fashion of one awakening she clung to the misty frontiers of a fading dream-country.  She breathed deeply, inhaling the freshness of the new dawn.  Then suddenly her eyes flew open, and she sat up with a little cry; a man who would have fitted well enough into any fancy-free maiden’s dreams was standing close to her side, looking down at her.  Helen’s hands flew to her hair.

Plainly—­she read that in the first flashing look—­he was no less astounded than she.  At the moment he made a picture to fill the eye and remain in the memory of a girl fresh from an Eastern City.  The tall, rangy form was garbed in the picturesque way of the country; she took him in from the heels of the black boots with their silver spurs to the top of his head with its amazingly wide black hat.  He stood against a sky rapidly filling to the warm glow of the morning.  His horse, a rarely perfect creation even in the eyes of one who knew little of fine breeding in animals, stood just at its master’s heels, with ears pricked forward curiously.

Helen wondered swiftly if he intended to stand there until the sun came up, just looking at her.  Though it was scarcely more than a moment that he stood thus, in Helen’s confusion the time seemed much longer.  She began to grow ill at ease; she felt a quick spurt of irritation.  No doubt she looked a perfect fright, taken all unawares like this, and equally indisputably he was forming an extremely uncomplimentary opinion of her.  It required less than three seconds for Miss Helen to decide emphatically that the man was a horrible creature.

But he did not look any such thing.  He was healthy and brown and boyish.  He had had a shave and haircut no longer ago than yesterday and looked neat and clean.  His mouth was quite as large as a man’s should be and now was suddenly smiling.  At the same instant his hat came off in his big brown hand and a gleam of downright joyousness shone in his eyes.