When he had cleaned the last clods from the ditch, he set off with tripod and shovel on shoulder to walk with her to the cabins, while Dave followed with Dick.  At the houses Bryant cast an appraising look at the scanty heap of chopped wood and wound up his visit by seizing the axe and attacking the store of dry poles hauled from the canon by the man who had built the cabins.

“There, that will keep you going for awhile,” he stated, when he had produced a large pile of sticks.  “I don’t believe you’re strong enough to handle an axe, Miss Martin; and it would grieve me deeply to learn you had removed a toe in the attempt.  Really, this homesteading game isn’t for women and girls.”

“Oh, we’ve made out fairly well.”

“Your spirit is admirable, but I can’t say as much for your judgment in the matter,” he returned, good-naturedly.  “Still, we all go hunting trouble in our own individual fashion; if not in one way, why, then in another.”

It was after five o’clock when Lee Bryant and Dave, once more leading the loaded horse, took their departure and followed Sarita Creek down to the mesa trail.  When they had struck into the latter and travelled it for half a mile, they saw a long distance ahead someone walking toward them, also leading a horse.  In a land where men saddle a mount to ride a few hundred yards, the singular coincidence excited their curiosity.  They wondered why the fellow walked, as doubtless he was wondering the same thing of them.  But as they drew nearer they perceived the pedestrian to be not a man but a woman; and when they met Bryant recognized in her the girl who had sat by Charlie Menocal in his automobile at the ford.  Her gray corded riding habit was dusty; she appeared both hot and tired; and her countenance showed a deep dejection.  The horse she led was limping.

Bryant raised his hat and addressed her.

“Your horse has gone lame, I see.  Can I be of any service to you?”

“I’m afraid not; he acts as if he had strained a tendon,” she replied.  “So I’m leading him home.  Our ranch is on Diamond Creek.”

“But you had a fall!  There’s blood on your glove.”

“No, it’s not from that,” she said, with a shake of her head.

Bryant again remarked the exquisite molding of her face as he had noted it at their first meeting, and her wide brow and clear brown eyes and the fineness of her skin, and her warm, sensitive lips, at this instant moving in the barest tremble imaginable.  She was gazing at him with a curious, troubled look.

“Bring Dick here,” Lee bade Dave.

He swiftly untied the ropes and removed tripod, rod, and saddle.  Then he unfastened the hitch of the saddle of the horse the girl led.

“Why, what are you doing?” she exclaimed.

“Giving you a fresh horse.  You can ride mine home and send him back to me to-morrow; I live just ahead on Perro Creek at the Stevenson place.”