At last she beheld the look of the conquered—­the utter surrender of the broken and subdued—­gleam dully from the wilted pony’s eyes.  She pitied the animal she had feared and hated but a few brief moments before.  She began to think that the man was perhaps the brute, after all, to ride the exhausted creature thus without a sign of mercy.

She rose to her feet as the two came at last to a halt, master and servant, conquered and conqueror, man and quivering beast.

Then Van got down, and her heart, that had pitied the horse, welled with deeper feeling for the rider.  She had never in her life seen a face so drawn, so utterly haggard beneath a mask of red as that presented by the horseman.

Van nearly fell, but would not fall, and instead stood trembling, his arm by natural inclination now circling the neck of the pony.

“Well, Suvy,” he said not ungently, “we gave each other hell.  Hereafter we’re going to be friends.”

Beth heard him.  She also saw the chestnut turn and regard the man with a look of appeal and dumb questioning in his eyes that choked her—­with joy and compassion together.  She someway knew that this man and horse would be comrades while they lived.

Half an hour afterward as she, Van, and Elsa rode forward as before, she saw the man in affection pat the broncho on the neck.  And the horse pricked his ears in a newfound gladness in service and friendship that his nature could not yet comprehend.

CHAPTER VII

AN EXCHANGE OF QUESTIONS

Youth is elastic, and Van was young.  An hour of quiet riding restored him astoundingly.  He bore no signs of fatigue that Beth could detect upon his face.  Once more, as he had in the morning, he was riding ahead in the trail, apparently all but oblivious of the two anxious women in his charge.

They had wound far downward through a canyon, and now at length were emerging on a sagebrush slope that lowered to the valley.  Van halted for Beth to ride to his side, and onward they continued together.

“I suppose you have friends to whom you are going in Goldite,” he said, “—­or at least there’s someone you know.”

“Yes,” she answered, “my brother.”

Van looked at her in his quizzical way, observing: 

“I don’t believe I know him.”

Her glance was almost one of laughter.

“Why, how can you tell?  You don’t even know his name.”  She paused, then added quietly:  “It’s Glenmore Kent.”  She felt he had a right to know not only her brother’s name, but also her own, if only for what he had done.  “You might, of course, know him after all,” she concluded.  “He has quite a number of acquaintances.”

“Kent,” said Van.  To himself it was “Beth Kent” he was saying.  “No, guess not.  No such luck, but I hope you’ll find him in the camp.”

“Do you think I may not?” She was just a trifle startled by the possibility.