‘Impudent beast!’ was Helen’s quick thought.  She had given her mind last night a great deal less to matters of toilet than to mystic imaginings; it lay entirely in the field of absurd likelihood that there was a smear of black across her face.

‘My mistake,’ grinned the stranger.  ’Guess I’ll step out while the stepping’s good and the road open.  If there’s one sure thing a man ought to be shot for, it’s stampeding in on another fellow’s honeymoon. Adios, senora.’

‘Honeymoon!’ gasped Helen.  ‘The big fool.’

Her father wakened abruptly, sat up, grasping his big revolver in both hands, and blinked about him; he, too, had had his dreams.  In the night-cap which he had purchased in San Juan, his wide, grave eyes and sun-blistered face turned up inquiringly; he was worthy of a second glance as he sat prepared to defend himself and his daughter.  The stranger had just set the toe of his boot into the stirrup; in this posture he remained, forgetful of his intention to mount, while his mare began to circle and he had to hop along to keep pace with her, his eyes upon the startled occupant of the bed beyond Helen’s.  He had had barely more than time to note the evident discrepancy in ages which naturally should have started his mind down a new channel for the explanation of the true relationship, when the revolver clutched tightly in unaccustomed fingers went off with an unexpected roar.  Dust spouted up a yard beyond the feet of the man who held it.  The horse plunged, the stranger went up into the saddle like a flash, and the man dropped his gun to his blanket and muttered in the natural bewilderment of the moment: 

‘It—­it went off by itself!  The most amazing——­’

The rider brought his prancing horse back and fought with his facial muscles for gravity; the light in his eyes was utterly beyond his control.

‘I’d better be going off by myself somewhere,’ he remarked as gravely as he could manage, ’if you’re going to start shooting a man up just because he calls before breakfast.’

With a face grown a sick white, the man in bed looked helplessly from the stranger to his daughter and then to the gun.

‘I didn’t do a thing to it,’ he began haltingly.

‘You won’t do a thing to yourself one of these fine days.’ remarked the horseman with evident relish, ’if you don’t quit carrying that sort of life-saver.  Come over to the ranch and I’ll swap you a hand-axe for it.’

Helen sniffed audibly and distastefully.  Her first impression of the stranger had been more correct than are first impressions nine times out of ten; he was as full of impudence as a city sparrow.  She had sat up ‘looking like a fright’; her father had made himself ridiculous; the stranger was mirthfully concerned with the amusing possibilities of both of them.

Suddenly the tall man, smitten by inspiration, slapped his thigh with one hand, while with the other he curbed rebellion in his mare and offered the explosive wager: