warm in this desert country, isn't it?" he said, with over-politeness and the smile which he knew to be irresistible.
The girl turned from gazing out the window, and her eyes met his, very clear and very much amused.
"Very warm," she smiled back at him. Even then he had a faint fear that she was not so much smiling as laughing. "The surprising thing is how well things keep, is it not?"
"Ah—yes," he murmured, not entirely confident, and still dropping into a chair at her side. "You mean—"
"How fresh some things keep!"
Roger Hapgood's pink little face went violently red.
"I say!" he began. "I didn't mean any offense. I thought—"
"Oh, that's all right," she laughed, gaily. "No offense whatever. Will you please open that window for me?"
His face became normally pink again as he hastened to throw up the window in front of her. His eyelid fluttered downward as he met the regard of a couple of men facing them. Then he came back to her side.
"Thank you," she smiled sweetly up at him. And she held out her hand.
He didn't know what she wanted to do that for, but had a confused idea that in the free and easy spirit of the West she was going to shake hands. The next thing which he realized clearly was that she had dropped a shining ten-cent piece into his palm.
"Oh, look here," he stammered, only to be interrupted by her voice, a gurgle of suppressed mirth in it.
"I'm sorry that that's all I have in change! And now, if you will hand me that magazine—I want to read!"
Roger Hapgood fumbled with the dime and dropped it. He swept up the magazine from a near-by chair and held it out to her. As he did so he caught a glimpse of the faces of the two men at whom he had winked so knowingly, heard one of them break into loud, hearty laughter. Dropping the magazine to her lap, the lavender young man, with what dignity he could command, marched back to the smoking-car.
A few minutes later Greek Conniston, returning to the smoking-car, found his friend pinching his smooth cheek thoughtfully and frowning out the window. He dropped into his chair, deep in thought. In the brief interval he had taken his resolution, plunging, as was his careless nature, after the first impulse. The girl had interested him; he did not yet realize how much. She came aboard the train without bag or baggage. Certainly she could not be going far. And he—it didn't matter in the least where he went. All that he had to do was to keep out of his father's way until the old man cooled down, and then to wire for money. His ticket read to San Francisco, but he had no desire to go there rather than to any other place. And he told himself that he had a sort of curiosity about this bleak, monotonous desert land.
An hour later the train ran into another little clutter of buildings and drew up, puffing, at the station. Conniston's eyes were alert, fixed upon the passageway from the observation-car rather than on the view from his window. Mail-bags were tossed on and off, a few packages handled by the Wells Fargo man, and the train pulled out. Conniston leaned back with a sigh.
"Roger," he said, at last, "I've got a proposition to make."
"Well?"
"Let's drop off at one of these dinky towns and see what it's like. I've a notion we might find something new."
"That's a real joke, I suppose?"
"Not at all," maintained Conniston. "I'm going to do it. Are you with me?"
Hapgood sat bolt upright.
"Are you crazy, man!" he cried, sharply.
Conniston shrugged. "Why not? You've never seen anything but city life and the summer-resort sort of thing any more than I have. It would be a lark."
"Excuse me! I guess I'm something of a fool for having chased clean across the continent, but I'm not the kind of fool that's going to pick a place like this sand-pile to drop off in!"
"All right, old man. Nobody's asking you to if you feel that way."
Hapgood waited as long as he could for Conniston to go on, and when there came no further information he asked, incredulously:
"You don't mean that, do you, Greek? You don't intend to stop off all alone out here in this rotten wilderness?"
"Yes, I do. If you won't stop with me."
"But how about me? What am I to do? Here I am—busted! What do you think I'm going to do?"
"You can go on to San Francisco if you like. You can have half of what I've got left—or you can drop off with me."
Hapgood argued and exploded and sulked by turns. In the end, seeing the futility of trying to reason with a man who only laughed, and seeing further the disadvantage of being cut off from his source of easy money, Roger gave in, growling. So when the train drew into Indian Creek that afternoon there were three people who got down from it.
CHAPTER II
Indian Creek stood lonely and isolated in the flat, treeless, sun-smitten desert. Only in the south was the unbroken flatness relieved by a low-lying ridge of barren brown hills, their sides cut as by erosion into steep, stratified cliffs. Even these bleak hills looked to be twenty miles away, and were in reality fifty. Beyond them, softened and blurred by the distance, was a blue-gray line where the mountains were.
"Of all the wretched holes in the world!" fumed Hapgood.
But Conniston didn't hear him. The girl had stepped down from the train, and, without casting a glance behind her, walked swiftly across the wriggling thing which stood for a street in Indian Creek. There was a saloon with a long hitching-pole in front of it, to which a couple of saddle-horses were tied, and a buckboard with two fretting two-year-olds in dust-covered harness. A man, a swarthy half-breed, with hair and eyes and long, pointed mustaches of inky blackness, was on the seat, handling the jerking reins. He called a soft "Adios, compadre" to the man lounging in the doorway, and swung his colts out into the road, making a sweeping half-circle, bringing them to a restless halt, pawing and fighting their bits, at the girl's side. While with one brown hand he held them back, with the other he swept off his wide, black hat.
"How do, Mess!" he cried, softly, his teeth flashing a white greeting.
She answered him with a "Hello, Joe!" as she climbed to his side.
Joe loosened his reins a very little, called sharply to his horses, and in a whirlwind of dust the buckboard made an amazingly sharp turn and shot rattling down the road and out toward the mountains in the south.
"And now what?" grinned Hapgood, maliciously. "Even your country girl has gone!"
Greek Conniston gazed a moment after the flying buckboard, a vague, wavering, unreal thing, through the dust of its own making, and, hiding his disappointment under a shrug, turned to Hapgood.
"Now for a hotel somewhere, if the place has one. Come on, Roger. We're in for it
