His gray eyes, which had been warm as summer sunshine on a hill, were now fixed on her with chill inscrutability.

“I don’t know.  It might be that.  Very likely.”  He saw the pulse in her throat beating fast as she hesitated before she plunged on.  “A warning is not a threat.  If you know this Senor Gordon, tell him to sell whatever claim he has.  Tell him, at least, to fight from a distance; not to come to this valley himself.  Else his life would be at hazard.”

“If he is a man that will not keep him away.  He will fight for what is his all the more because there is danger.  What’s more, he’ll do his fighting on the ground—­unless he’s a quitter.”

She sighed.

“I was afraid so.”

“But you have not told me yet the alleged defect in the Valdes claim.  There must be some point of law upon which the thing hangs.”

“It is claimed that Don Bartolome did not take up his actual residence on the grant, as the law required.  Then, too, he himself was later governor of the province, and while he was president of the Ayuntamiento at Tome he officially indorsed some small grants of land made from this estate.  He did this because he wanted the country developed, and was willing to give part of what he had to his neighbors; but I suppose the contestant will claim this showed he had abandoned his grant.”

“I see.  Title not perfected,” he summed up briefly.

“We deny it, of course—­I mean, Miss Valdes does.  She shows that in his will the old don mentions it, and that her father lived there without interruption, even though Manuel Armijo later granted the best of it to Jose Moreno.”

“It would be pretty tough for her to be fired out now.  I reckon she’s attached to the place, her and her folks having lived there so long,” the young man mused aloud.

“Her whole life is wrapped up in it.  It is the home of her people.  She belongs to it, and it to her,” the girl answered.

“Mebbe this Gordon is a white man.  I reckon he wouldn’t drive her out.  Like as not he’d fix up a compromise.  There’s enough for both.”

She shook her head decisively.

“No.  It would have to be a money settlement.  Miss Valdes’s people are settled all over the estate.  Some of them have bought small ranches.  You see, she couldn’t—­throw them down—­as you Americans say.”

“That’s right,” he agreed.  “Well, I shouldn’t wonder but it can be fixed up some way.”

They had been driving across a flat cactus country, and for some time had been approaching the grove of willows into which she now turned.  Some wooden barns, a corral, an adobe house, and outhouses marked the place as one of the more ambitious ranches of the valley.

An old Mexican came forward with a face wreathed in smiles.

"Buenos, Dona Maria,” he cried, in greeting.

“Buenos, Antonio.  This gentleman is Mr. Richard Muir.”