She did not ask him what he meant, nor did she ask again where he was going.  For the moment, she could not trust her voice to say more.

“Too late, because I’ve seen in this valley some one I’ll never forget, and too soon because that some one will forget me, sure as a gun,” he told her.

“Not if you write to him.”

“It isn’t a him.  It’s my little nurse.”

“I’ll tell auntie how you feel about it, and I’m sure she won’t forget you.”

“You know mighty well I ain’t talking about auntie.”

“Then I suppose you must mean me.”

“That’s who I’m meaning.”

“I think I’ll be able to remember you if I try—­ by Teddy,” she answered, without looking at him, and devoted herself to petting the horse.

“Is it—­ would it be any use to say any more, Arlie?” he asked, in a low voice, as he stood beside her, with Teddy’s nose in his hands.

“I—­ I don’t know what you mean, sir.  Please don’t say anything more about it.”  Then again memory of the other girl flamed through her.  “No, it wouldn’t—­ not a bit of use, not a bit,” she broke out fiercely.

“You mean you couldn’t——­”

The flame in her face, the eyes that met his, as if drawn by a magnet, still held their anger, but mingled with it was a piteous plea for mercy.  “I—­ I’m only a girl.  Why don’t you let me alone?” she cried bitterly, and hard upon her own words turned and ran from the room.

Steve looked after her in amazed surprise.  “Now don’t it beat the band the way a woman takes a thing.”

Dubiously he took himself to the stable and said good-by to Dillon.

An hour later she went down to dinner still flushed and excited.  Before she had been in the room two minutes her father gave her a piece of startling news.

“I been talking to Steve.  Gracious, gyurl, what do you reckon that boy’s a-goin’ to do?”

Arlie felt the color leap into her cheeks.

“What, dad?”

“He’s a’goin’ back to Gimlet Butte, to give himself up to Brandt, day after to-morrow.”

“But—­ what for?” she gasped.

“Durned if I know!  He’s got some fool notion about playin’ fair.  Seems he came into the Cedar Mountain country to catch the Squaw Creek raiders.  Brandt let him escape on that pledge.  Well, he’s give up that notion, and now he thinks, dad gum it, that it’s up to him to surrender to Brandt again.”

The girl’s eyes were like stars.  “And he’s going to go back there and give himself up, to be tried for killing Faulkner.”

Dillon scratched his head.  “By gum, gyurl, I didn’t think of that.  We cayn’t let him go.”

“Yes, we can.”

“Why, honey, he didn’t kill Faulkner, looks like.  We cayn’t let him go back there and take our medicine for us.  Mebbe he would be lynched.  It’s a sure thing he’d be convicted.”

“Never mind.  Let him go.  I’ve got a plan, dad.”  Her vivid face was alive with the emotion which spoke in it.  “When did he say he was going?” she asked buoyantly.