At this juncture Dick Gale felt it absolutely impossible for him to play the eavesdropper any longer.  Quietly he rolled out of bed.  The voices still sounded close outside, and it was only by effort that he kept from further listening.  Belding’s kindly interest, Laddy’s blunt and sincere cowboy eulogy, the girl’s sweet eagerness and praise—­these warmed Gale’s heart.  He had fallen among simple people, into whose lives the advent of an unknown man was welcome.  He found himself in a singularly agitated mood.  The excitement, the thrill, the difference felt in himself, experienced the preceding night, had extended on into his present.  And the possibilities suggested by the conversation he had unwittingly overheard added sufficiently to the other feelings to put him into a peculiarly receptive state of mind.  He was wild to be one of the Belding rangers.  The idea of riding a horse in the open desert, with a dangerous duty to perform, seemed to strike him with an appealing force.  Something within him went out to the cowboys, to this blunt and kind Belding.  He was afraid to meet the girl.  If every man who came along fell in love with this sweet-voiced Nell, then what hope had he to escape—­now, when his whole inner awakening betokened a change of spirit, hope, a finding of real worth, real good, real power in himself?  He did not understand wholly, yet he felt ready to ride, to fight, to love the desert, to love these outdoor men, to love a woman.  That beautiful Spanish girl had spoken to something dead in him and it had quickened to life.  The sweet voice of an audacious, unseen girl warned him that presently a still more wonderful thing would happen to him.

Gale imagined he made noise enough as he clumsily pulled on his boots, yet the voices, split by a merry laugh, kept on murmuring outside the door.  It was awkward for him, having only one hand available to lace up his boots.  He looked out of the window.  Evidently this was at the end of the house.  There was a flagstone walk, beside which ran a ditch full of swift, muddy water.  It made a pleasant sound.  There were trees strange of form and color to to him.  He heard bees, birds, chickens, saw the red of roses and green of grass.  Then he saw, close to the wall, a tub full of water, and a bench upon which lay basin, soap, towel, comb, and brush.  The window was also a door, for under it there was a step.

Gale hesitated a moment, then went out.  He stepped naturally, hoping and expecting that the cowboys would hear him.  But nobody came.  Awkwardly, with left hand, he washed his face.  Upon a nail in the wall hung a little mirror, by the aid of which Dick combed and brushed his hair.  He imagined he looked a most haggard wretch.  With that he faced forward, meaning to go round the corner of the house to greet the cowboys and these new-found friends.

Dick had taken but one step when he was halted by laugher and the patter of light feet.