Angus came out of the darkness slowly with the weight still upon him. There was a strange, salt taste in his mouth and a rank smell in his nostrils. His head seemed pillowed, but his eyelids were gummed, and when he threw up his hand to clear them his fingers touched wetness. Then through a raw, red fog he saw a girl's face bending above him, and blue eyes that seemed misty as an April sky through showers, though perhaps it was only his uncertain vision that made them so.

"Please say something—if you can hear me!" said a low, clear voice as his senses came back fully.

"All right," he said. "I'm all right, I guess. What's holding me? What's on me?"

As his eyes shifted downward, a huge mound of brown fur rose against them, hiding the landscape. It was the carcass of the bear which lay across his legs, burying them from the waist down.

"I can't move it," the girl told him. "Oh, are you badly hurt? Can you take a drink of water? I'll lift your head!" She spoke all in a breath, tremulously, for she had considered him almost a dead man. She lifted his head from where it lay in her lap, and held an old tin can full of spring water to his lips.

Angus drank and felt better.

"I don't think I'm hurt much," he said. "Where is all the blood coming from?" He put his hand to his head, touching gingerly a four-inch rip in his scalp. There was a pain in his side which was worse when he moved, but he said nothing about that and otherwise he could find nothing wrong.

"You must get out from under that brute," the girl told him. "I've tried to pull it off, and I've tried to pull you out, but I'm not strong enough."

She stooped behind him, her hands beneath his shoulders, and he drew his legs clear of the weight. When he got to his feet he was giddy for a moment and leaned against her for support. With her assistance he got to the spring, and washed off the coagulated blood, while she made a bandage of their handkerchiefs and fitted it deftly. The icy water cleared away the last of the fog, and save for a growing stiffness and soreness he felt well enough. He looked at the girl who sat beside him on the brown grass and wondered who she was and where on earth she had come from.

The girl was tall, and clean and graceful as a young pine. She carried her head well lifted, which Angus considered a good sign in horses and human beings. A mass of fair hair was coiled low at the base of it and drawn smoothly back from a broad forehead. Her eyes were a clear blue which reminded Angus of certain mountain lakes, and yet a little weary and troubled as if some shadow overcast them. Her smooth cheeks, too, were pale, with but little of the color that comes from the kiss of wind and sun. She was an utter stranger to him, and yet there was something vaguely familiar.

The fact was that he was staring at her. She met his gaze evenly.

"Do you know that you are lucky not to be badly hurt?" she said.

"It would have served me right if I had been."

"Why?"

"For leaving my rifle in the first place, and for rotten shooting in the second," he replied seriously. "I should have stopped him, and so I would if I had taken my time about it. I guess I got rattled."

"Is that your trouble?" she laughed. "The bear is simply riddled with bullets."

"Is that so?" he returned with obvious pleasure. "Tell me what happened."

"I stopped running when you fired the first shot," she said. "You and the bear seemed to go down together, and he rolled clean over you. It was only in his last flurry that he threw himself across your legs."

"Lucky he didn't claw me up in that flurry. He was a tough old boy."

"If you had been killed it would have been my fault," she said seriously. "You were quite safe, and you attacked him to save me."

"I would have come down, anyway, the first chance he gave me to get hold of my rifle."

"It was stupid of me," she persisted. "At first, you see, I couldn't believe there was a bear. I thought you were trying to frighten me. And then I just couldn't catch that pony. I'm not used to horses, I'm afraid."

Now, as she spoke, something in her voice struck a chord in Angus' recollection. Where had he heard that faint lisp, that slurring of the sibilants? For a moment he puzzled, groping for an elusive memory. And then suddenly it leaped at him out of the one day, years before, whose happenings, even the least of them, he never forgot. And he saw a little girl, frightened but trying to be brave, and a lanky boy confronting her with a rifle.

"Good Lord!" he exclaimed, "you are little Faith Winton!"

She frowned, drawing herself up a little.

"I am Faith Winton, but how do you know? Have I ever—" She broke off, staring at him. "Why, it's impossible. You can't be that boy!"

"I used to be," he told her. "I've grown a little, since."

"Angus! Angus Mackay!" she cried, her face lighting swiftly. "Oh, I know you now. I've never forgotten. And your sister's doughnuts! How good they were, and how good you were to me!" She leaned forward, catching his great, brown, work-hardened paws in her slim hands. "Oh, I'm so glad to see you again, Ang—I mean Mr. Mackay."

"My name is still Angus."

"Oh, but that was years ago. How did you recognize me? I was such a little girl. To think of meeting you again—like this!"

"I knew you by your lisp," he told her. "And I wish you would call me 'Angus.'"

"Well—Anguth!" She said it with the old lisp. "I can't help it sometimes," she confessed. "I struggle and struggle, and then I forget myself and—lithp. Do you mind it very much?"

"I like it."

"Tho nithe of you to thay tho!" she exaggerated laughing. "No, I won't lisp any more—until I forget myself. But how big you are—almost as big as Gavin himself."

"I am big enough," Angus admitted. "I get in my own way sometimes." For the first time he noticed a black band on her sleeve. She caught the glance.

"My father died two months ago." Her voice broke, and Angus looked away.

"I am sorry," he said awkwardly.

"I can't talk about it very well yet," she said. "I didn't mean to. One shouldn't—to a stranger."

"But I'm not a stranger. You seem like—well—like an old friend."

"I'm glad of that," she said, smiling a trifle sadly. "You see, father and I were always together, and it's new and—and hard to be alone. But I suppose I shall get used to it after a while."

"You have your kin here," he ventured.

"Yes, I have them," she agreed. "But they are not really my kin. And then I won't be with them very long."

"You are going away?" For some reason Angus experienced a sensation of regret.

"No, I am going to stay here. I am thinking of ranching."

"Ranching!" he exclaimed.

"Yes. Why not?"

"Do you know anything about it?"

"No, but I could learn, I suppose."

"I suppose you might. But the work is hard—man's work. I wouldn't buy a ranch, if I were you."

"But I have one—or the makings of one. A few years ago Uncle Godfrey bought nearly a thousand acres for father. I'm afraid there isn't much of it cleared, and there is no house fit to live in. I had been to look at it, and was riding back by this old logging camp. That's how I happened to be here."

"Where is this land?" Angus asked.

Her reply gave him almost as much of a shock as he had received from the bear; for as she described it, the land, or at least part of it, was none other than the old Tetreau place which Mr. Braden had painstakingly tried to unload on Chetwood. But if it belonged to her or to her father how could Braden sell it? And then, again, she had spoken of nearly a thousand acres, while the old Tetreau place comprised some five hundred only. Something of his thoughts reflected in his face.

"Do you know the land?" she asked.

"Yes, I know it," he admitted. "Have you ever thought of selling the land instead of ranching it? Has any one ever tried to sell it for you?"

"Oh, no," she replied. "I don't want to sell it—yet, a while, anyway. Father's idea was to hold it till land increased very much in value. Uncle Godfrey told him that was bound to occur. It was an investment, you see. It cost only ten dollars an acre."

"You mean your father paid ten thousand dollars for the land!" Angus exclaimed.

"Yes, in round figures. He never saw it. Uncle Godfrey said it was well worth that, and of course he knows."

There was little that Angus could say. He was no stranger to wild-catting in lands, but he held to the old idea that agricultural land is worth what it will grow and no more: a maxim which, if remembered by prospective purchasers, would cut down both sales and disappointments. But the puzzling thing was that Godfrey French, who wasn't an easy mark by any means, should have advised his relative to pay ten dollars an acre for land half of which was too rough to cultivate and of which all was non-irrigable; and this at a time when good, wild land was to be had in plenty for from three to five dollars an acre. Added to that was the abortive Braden-Chetwood deal. The one clear thing was that Faith Winton had a bunch of worthless land. He hoped that it did not represent her entire patrimony.

"You will find it hard work starting a ranch," he said. "Clearing, breaking, fencing and so on are expensive, too."

"But whatever I spend will make the place worth that much more, and then if I wish to sell I would have a better chance. People always prefer to buy improved properties, I'm told."

Angus had neither the heart nor the nerve to tell her the truth. Everything went to show that her father had been deliberately stung by Godfrey French. Never in the world would he have paid ten dollars of his own money for such a property. Had he paid ten dollars of Winton's money? Angus doubted it. In plain language, his thought was that French had paid about three dollars an acre, and either pocketed the difference or split it with the seller.

"What does your uncle think about it?" he asked.

"He doesn't want me to try ranching. He says the place is increasing in value anyway, and that I should not be in a hurry to sell."

Naturally, thought Angus, that would be French's advice. Perhaps he had had the handling of the property, and Braden had been acting for him when trying to sell to Chetwood. If that sale had gone through, half the property would have been sold for what had been paid for the whole, and the remainder, worthless or not, would have been velvet. But as it was French was in a tight box, and the only thing he could do was to advise the girl to let the place alone, and hope that nothing would occur to arouse her suspicions. Angus half wished for her sake that he had not blocked the sale to Chetwood.

"You see," she said, "I have to do something for a living. I haven't enough to keep me in idleness, and anyway I don't want to be idle. But I didn't mean to bother you with my worries. I don't know why it is, but I find myself talking to you just as frankly as when I was the little, lost girl and you were the big boy. Perhaps I am a little lost, still. You—you seem comforting, somehow." She considered for a moment. "Perhaps it's the bigness of you. But I don't talk to Gavin as I do to you, and I know him much better. Why is it?"

"I don't know, but I'm glad of it," Angus told her. "I want to help you if I can."

"Now, I believe that's why," she said. "You want to help folks who need it. That's the secret of it."

"Nothing of the sort," Angus told her. Suddenly he realized that the sun was low above the western ranges and that the early fall evening was coming. "We'll have to be moving if we're to get home by dark," he said. "To-morrow I'll skin out the bear."

"Oh—my pony!" she exclaimed. "I never thought of him."

"No use looking for him. Likely he headed for home. You'll ride my horse."

"And let you walk? Indeed, no!"

"Of course you will."

"But I won't. You're hurt—"

"Not a bit," Angus lied cheerfully.

"Yes, you are. There, you see, you're almost too stiff to walk. I won't have it, Angus, really I won't."

Angus did not argue the point further. He was accustomed to having his own way with girls, or at least with Jean. He was sore and stiff, and when he first moved a sharp pain in his side made him catch his breath, but he knew that the best cure for stiffness is movement. They crossed the creek and he saddled Chief, and without a word began to take up the stirrups.

"Angus," said Faith Winton, "I meant what I told you. I rode your pony years ago, when I was a little, lost girl—"

"What are you now?"

"A pedestrian," she said with determination.

"Now, see," Angus urged. "It's over five miles. Your shoes would be cut to pieces on the rocks, and you'd be tired out. So you're going to ride."

"I'm not, Angus! What are you—Oh!"

For Angus, finding that argument was a waste of time had picked her up and put her in the saddle. Thence she stared down at him, and now there was no lack of color in her cheeks.

"Angus Mackay! What—what do you mean?"

"You are going to ride," Angus told her with finality, "and that is all there is to it."

"I'm not used to being thrown about like a sack of oats!" she flashed, and would have dismounted, but he stopped her. "How dare you!" she cried. "Let me down! Take your hands off me, Angus Mackay!"

"Then behave sensibly!" said Angus.

"Sensibly! My heavens! do you think I'm a child?"

"A child would be glad to ride."

"Do you think you can make me do things merely because you're stronger?"

"Yes," Angus told her flatly, "some things. This, for one."

"Admitting that—you're brutal!"

"And admitting that," Angus returned, "will you act like a sensible girl?"

For a moment she frowned at him, her eyes stormy, dark with anger. And then, slowly, she bent low over the saddle horn, and turned her face away, while a sob shook her slight figure. At which awful spectacle Angus' resolution suddenly melted to contrition.

"Don't do that!" he pleaded. "Don't cry. I didn't mean it. Come on and walk. Walk all you like. Walk a lot. I'll help you down."

She turned her face to him and he gasped; for in place of tears there was laughter, mocking laughter.

"You—you fraud!" he exclaimed.

"You—you bluff!" she retorted. "This was one of the things you could make me do because you were stronger, was it? Oh, Angus Mackay, what a soft heart you have in that big body!"

"It would serve you right if I made you walk!" he told her indignantly.

"Yes, wouldn't it? But you won't. I'll ride—if you'll promise to tell me if you get tired."

And so they went down the old tote road in the wan light of the fall sunset.

"It's exactly like that day so many years ago," she said.

But Angus, though he agreed with her, was privately conscious of a vast difference. On that far-away day he had considered the little, lost girl a nuisance and an imposition. Now he felt a strange, warm glow and thrill as he walked beside her, and a sense of contentment strange to him. He was conscious of this feeling. But, quite honestly, he attributed it to the fact that he had just got his first grizzly, and what was more, centered him, charging, with every shot; which, as he looked at it, ought to be a source of satisfaction to any properly constituted man, and adequately explained the sense of contentment aforesaid.