Belding deliberated a little longer.  He knew the girl.

“Well, I promise not to tell mother,” he said, presently; “and seeing you’re here safe and well, I guess I won’t go packing a gun down there, wherever that is.  But I won’t promise to keep anything from Dick that perhaps he ought to know.”

“Dad, what would Dick do if—­if he were here and I were to tell him I’d—­I’d been horribly insulted?”

“I guess that ’d depend.  Mostly, you know, Dick does what you want.  But you couldn’t stop him—­nobody could—­if there was reason, a man’s reason, to get started.  Remember what he did to Rojas!...Nell, tell me what’s happened.”

Nell, regaining her composure, wiped her eyes and smoothed back her hair.

“The other day, Wednesday,” she began, “I was coming home, and in front of that mescal drinking-place there was a crowd.  It was a noisy crowd.  I didn’t want to walk out into the street or seem afraid.  But I had to do both.  There were several young men, and if they weren’t drunk they certainly were rude.  I never saw them before, but I think they must belong to the mining company that was run out of Sonora by rebels.  Mrs. Carter was telling me.  Anyway, these young fellows were Americans.  They stretched themselves across the walk and smiled at me.  I had to go out in the road.  One of them, the rudest, followed me.  He was a big fellow, red-faced, with prominent eyes and a bold look.  He came up beside me and spoke to me.  I ran home.  And as I ran I heard his companions jeering.

“Well, to-day, just now, when I was riding up the valley road I came upon the same fellows.  They had instruments and were surveying.  Remembering Dick, and how he always wished for an instrument to help work out his plan for irrigation, I was certainly surprised to see these strangers surveying—­and surveying upon Laddy’s plot of land.  It was a sandy road there, and Jose happened to be walking.  So I reined in and asked these engineers what they were doing.  The leader, who was that same bold fellow who had followed me, seemed much pleased at being addressed.  He was swaggering—­too friendly; not my idea of a gentleman at all.  He said he was glad to tell me he was going to run water all over Altar Valley.  Dad, you can bet that made me wild.  That was Dick’s plan, his discovery, and here were surveyors on Laddy’s claim.

“Then I told him that he was working on private land and he’d better get off.  He seemed to forget his flirty proclivities in amazement.  Then he looked cunning.  I read his mind.  It was news to him that all the land along the valley had been taken up.

“He said something about not seeing any squatters on the land, and then he shut up tight on that score.  But he began to be flirty again.  He got hold of Jose’s bridle, and before I could catch my breath he said I was a peach, and that he wanted to make a date with me, that his name was Chase, that he owned a gold mine in Mexico.  He said a lot more I didn’t gather, but when he called me ‘Dearie’ I—­well, I lost my temper.