“Her maid!” Mrs. Dick said no more as to that.  The way she said it was enough.  They had come to the door of her newly finished house, a clean, home-like place from which a fragrance of preparing breakfast flowed like a ravishing nectar.  “Where are they now?” she demanded impatiently.  “Wherever they are it ain’t fit for a horse!  Why don’t you go and fetch ’em?”

Van put the bag inside the door, then his hands on Mrs. Dick’s shoulders.

“I’ll bet your mother was a little red firecracker and your father a bottle of seltzer,” he said.  Then off he went for Beth.

She was not, of course, at “home” when he arrived at the place he had found the previous evening.  Disturbed for a moment by her absence, he presently discerned her, off there westward on the hill from which she was making a survey of the camp.

Three minutes after he was climbing up the slope and she turned and looked downward upon him.

“By heavens!” he said beneath his breath, “—­what beauty!”

The breeze was molding her dress upon her rounded form till she seemed like the statue of a goddess—­a goddess of freedom, loveliness, and joy, sculptured in the living flesh—­a figure vibrant with glowing health and youth, startlingly set in the desert’s gray austerity.  With the sunlight flinging its gold and riches upon her, what a marvel of color she presented!—­such creamy white and changing rose-tints in her cheeks—­such a wonderful brown in her hair and eyes—­such crimson of lips that parted in a smile over even little jewels of teeth!  And she smiled on the horseman, tall, and active, coming to find her on the hill.

“Good morning!” she cried.  “Oh, isn’t it wonderful—­so big, and bare, and clean!”

Van smiled.

“It’s a hungry-looking country to me—­looks as if it has eaten all the trees.  If it makes you think of breakfast, or just plain coffee and rolls, I’ve found a place I hope you’ll like, with a friend I didn’t know was here.”

“You are very kind, I’m sure,” she said.  “I’m afraid we’re a great deal of trouble.”

“That’s what women were made for,” he answered her frankly, a bright, dancing light in his eyes.  “They couldn’t help it if they would, and I guess they wouldn’t if they could.”

“Oh, indeed?” She shot him a quick glance, half a challenge.  “I guess if you don’t mind we won’t go to the place you’ve found, for breakfast, this morning.”

“You’d better guess again,” he answered, and taking her arm, in a masterful way that bereft her of the power of speech or resistance, he marched her briskly down the slope and straight towards Mrs. Dick’s.

“Thank your stars you’ve struck a place like this,” he said.  “If you don’t I’ll have to thank them for you.”

“Perhaps I ought to thank you first,” she ventured smilingly.  It would have seemed absurd to resent his boyish ways.

“You may,” he said, “when I get to be one of your stars.”