Speed grinned.  “Not in a thousand years, my friend.  Dillon’s ranch ain’t to be found, except by them that know every pocket of these hills like their own back yard.  I’ll guarantee you couldn’t find it in a month, unless you had a map locating it.”

“Must be in that Lost Valley, which some folks say is a fairy tale,” the ranger said carelessly, but with his eyes on the other.

The cattleman made no comment.  It occurred to Fraser that his remark had stirred some suspicion of him.  At least, it suggested caution.

“If you’re through with your breakfast, I’ll take back the dishes,” Speed said dryly.

The day wore to sunset.  After dark had fallen the Texan slipped through the alfalfa field again and bedded in the stack.  Before the morning was more than gray he returned to the underbrush of the ridge.  His breakfast finished, and Speed gone, he lay down on a great flat, sun-dappled rock, and looked into the unflecked blue sky.  The season was spring, and the earth seemed fairly palpitating with young life.  The low, tireless hum of insects went on all about him.  The air was vocal with the notes of nesting birds.  Away across the valley he could see a mountain slope, with snow gulches glowing pink in the dawn.  Little checkerboard squares along the river showed irrigated patches.  In the pleasant warmth he grew drowsy.  His eyes closed, opened, closed again.

He was conscious of no sound that awakened him, yet he was aware of a presence that drew him from drowsiness to an alert attention.  Instinctively, his hand crept to his scabbarded weapon.

“Don’t shoot me,” a voice implored with laughter—­ a warm, vivid voice, that struck pleasantly on his memory.

The Texan turned lazily, and leaned on his elbow.  She came smiling out of the brush, light as a roe, and with much of its slim, supple grace.  Before, he had seen her veiled by night; the day disclosed her a dark, spirited young creature.  The mass of blue-black hair coiled at the nape of the brown neck, the flash of dark eyes beneath straight, dark eyebrows, together with a certain deliberation of movement that was not languor, made it impossible to doubt that she was a Southerner by inheritance, if not by birth.

“I don’t reckon I will,” he greeted, smiling.  “Down in Texas it ain’t counted right good manners to shoot up young ladies.”

“And in Wyoming you think it is.”

“I judge by appearances, ma’am.”

“Then you judge wrong.  Those men did not know I was with dad that night.  They thought I was another man.  You see, they had just lost their suit for damages against dad and some more for the loss of six hundred sheep in a raid last year.  They couldn’t prove who did it.”  She flamed into a sudden passion of resentment.  “I don’t defend them any.  They are a lot of coyotes, or they wouldn’t have attacked two men, riding alone.”

He ventured a rapier thrust.  “How about the Squaw Creek raid?  Don’t your friends sometimes forget to fight fair, too?”