“You have been treated cruelly, Mr. Gordon.  Tell me that you are again all right,” she said, the color flooding her face at the searching question of his eyes.

“Right as a rivet, thanks.  It is to you I owe my freedom, I suppose.”

“To Manuel,” she corrected.  “His judgment was better than mine.”

“I can believe that.  He didn’t ride all night across dangerous mountain roads to save me.”

“Oh, that!” She tossed off his thanks with a little shrug.  “They are so impulsive, my boys ... like children, you know....  I was a little afraid they might——­”

“I was a little afraid myself they might,” he agreed dryly.  “But when you say children—­well, don’t you think wolves is a more accurate term for them?”

“Oh, no—­no!” Her protest was quick, eager, imperative.  “You don’t know how loyal they can be—­how faithful.  They are really just like children, so impulsive—­so unreasoning.”

“Afraid I can’t enthuse with you on that subject for a day or two yet,” he answered with a laugh.  “Truth is I found their childlike impulses both painful and annoying.  Next time you see them you might mention that I’m liable to have an impulse of my own they won’t enjoy.”

“That’s one of the things I want to talk with you about.  Manuel says you mean to prosecute.  I hope you won’t.  They’re friends of mine.  They thought they were helping me.  Of course I have no claim on you, but——­”

“You have a claim, Miss Valdes.  We’ll take that up presently.  Just now we’re talking about a couple of criminals due for a term in the penitentiary.  I offered them terms.  They wouldn’t accept.  Good enough.  They’ll have to stand the gaff, I reckon.”

She realized at once there was no use arguing with him.  The steel in his eyes told her he had made up his mind and was not to be moved.  But she could not desert her foolish dependents.

“I know.  What you say is quite true, but—­I’ll have to come to some agreement with you.  I can’t let them be punished for their loyalty to me.”

Her direct, unflinching look, its fearlessness, won his admiration.  In her slim suppleness, vibrant, feminine to the finger tips, alluring with the unconscious appeal of sex, there was a fine courage to face frankly essential facts.  But he was a hard man to move once he had made up his mind.  For all his frivolous impudence and his boyish good nature, he knew his own mind, and held to it with the stiffness characteristic of outdoor Westerners.

“You’re not in this, Miss Valdes.  I’ll settle my own accounts with your friends Sebastian and Pablo.”

“But even for your own sake——­” She stopped, intuitively aware that this was not the ground upon which to treat with him.  He would never drop the charges against the Mexicans merely because there was danger in pressing them.

“I reckon I’ll have to try to look out for myself.  Maybe next time I won’t be so easy a mark,” he answered with an almost insolent laugh.