The efficient Sucatash reported back to Solange the details of De Launay’s escape, making them characteristically brief and colorful. Then, with the effective aid of MacKay, he set out to prepare for the expedition in search of the mine.

Neither Sucatash nor Dave actually had any real conviction that Solange would venture into the Esmeraldas at this time of year to look for a mine whose very existence they doubted as being legendary. Yet neither tried to dissuade her from the rash adventure—as yet. In this attitude they were each governed by like feelings. Both of them were curious and sentimental. Each secretly wondered what the slender, rather silent young woman looked like, and each was beginning to imagine that the veil hid some extreme loveliness. Each felt himself handicapped in the unwonted atmosphere of the town and each imagined that, once he got on his own preserves, he would show to much better advantage in her eyes.

Sucatash was quite confident that, once they got Solange at his father’s ranch, they would be able to 175 persuade her to stay there for the winter. Dave also had about the same idea. Each reasoned that, in an indeterminate stay at the ranch, she would certainly, in time, show her countenance. Neither of them figured De Launay as anything but some assistant, more or less familiar with the West, whom she had engaged and who had been automatically eliminated by virtue of his latest escapade.

Solange, however, developed a disposition to arrange her own fate. She smiled politely when the young men gave awkward advice as to her costuming and equipment, but paid little heed to it. She allowed them to select the small portion of her camping outfit that they thought necessary at this stage, and to arrange for a car to take it and them to Wallace’s ranch. They took their saddles in the car and sent their horses out by such chance riders as happened to be going that way.

The journey to Wallace’s ranch was uneventful except for a stop at the former Brandon ranch at Twin Forks, where Solange met the Basco proprietors, and gave her cow-puncher henchmen further cause for wonder by conversing fluently with them in a language which bore no resemblance to any they had ever heard before. They noted an unusual deference which the shy mountaineers extended toward her.

There was a pause of some time while Solange visited the almost obliterated mound marking the grave of her father. But she did not pray over it 176 or manifest any great emotion. She simply stood there for some time, lost in thought, or else mentally renewing her vow of vengeance on his murderer. Then, after discovering that the sheepmen knew nothing of consequence concerning these long-past events, she came quietly back to the car and they resumed the journey.

Finally they passed a camp fire set back from the road at some distance and the cow-punchers pointed out the figure of Banker crouched above it, apparently oblivious of them.

“What you all reckon that old horned toad is a-doin’ here?” queried Dave, from the front seat. “Dry camp, and him only three mile from the house and not more’n five from the Spring.”

“Dunno,” replied Sucatash. “Him bein’ a prospector, that a way, most likely he ain’t got the necessary sense to camp where a white man naturally would bog down.”

“But any one would know enough to camp near water,” said Solange, surprised.

“Yes’m,” agreed Sucatash, solemnly. “Any one would! But them prospectors ain’t human, that a way. They lives in the deserts so much they gets kind of wild and flighty, ma’am. Water is so scarce that they gets to regardin’ it as somethin’ onnatural and dangerous. More’n enough of it to give ’em a drink or two and water the Jennies acts on ’em all 177 same like it does on a hydrophoby skunk. They foams at the mouth and goes mad.”

“With hydrophobia?” exclaimed the unsophisticated Solange.

“Yes’m,” said Sucatash. “Especially if it’s deep enough to cover their feet. Yuh see, ma’am, they gets in mortal terror that, if they nears enough water to wet ’em all over, some one will rack in and just forcibly afflict ’em with a bath—which ’ud sure drive one of ’em plumb loco.”

“I knows one o’ them desert rats,” said Dave, reminiscently, “what boasts a plenty about the health he enjoys. Which he sure allows he’s lived to a ripe old age—and he was ripe, all right. This here venerableness, he declares a whole lot, is solely and absolutely due to the ondisputable fact that he ain’t never bathed in forty-two years. And we proves him right, at that.”

“What!” cried the horrified Solange. “That his health was due to his uncleanliness? But that is absurd!”

“Which it would seem so, ma’am, but there ain’t no gettin’ round the proof. We all doubts it, just like you do. So we ups and hog ties the old natural, picks him up with a pair of tongs and dips him in the crick. Which he simply lets out one bloodcurdlin’ yell of despair and passes out immediate.”

“Mon Dieu!” said Solange, fervently. “Quels farceurs!” 178

“Yes’m,” they agreed, politely.

Then Solange laughed and they broke into sympathetic grins, even the solemn Sucatash showing his teeth in enjoyment as he heard her tinkling mirth with its bell-like note.

Then they forgot the squatting figure by its camp fire and drove on to the ranch.

This turned out to be a straggling adobe house, shaded by cottonwoods and built around three sides of a square. It was roomy, cool, and comfortable, with a picturesqueness all its own. To Solange, it was inviting and homelike, much more so than the rather cold luxury of hotels and Pullman staterooms. And this feeling of homeliness was enhanced when she was smilingly and cordially welcomed by a big, gray-bearded, bronzed man and a white-haired, motherly woman, the parents of young Sucatash.

The self-contained, self-reliant young woman almost broke down when Mrs. Wallace took her in charge and hurried her to her room. They seemed to know all about her and to take her arrival as an ordinary occurrence and a very welcome one. Sucatash, of course, was responsible for their knowledge, having telephoned them before they had started.

Before Solange reappeared ready for supper, Sucatash and Dave had explained all that they knew of the affair to Wallace. He was much interested but very dubious about it all.

“Of course, she’ll not be going into the mountains 179 at this time o’ year,” he declared. “It ain’t more than a week before the snow’s bound to fly, and the Esmeraldas ain’t no place for girls in the winter time. I reckon that feller you-all helped get out o’ jail and that I planted hosses for won’t more than make it across the range before the road’s closed. I hope it wasn’t nothin’ serious he was in for, son.”

“Nothin’ but too much hooch an’ rumplin’ up a couple of cops,” said his son, casually. “Not that I wouldn’t have helped so long as he was in fer anything less than murder. The mad’mo’selle wanted him out, yuh see.”

“S’pose she naturally felt responsible fer him, that a way,” agreed Wallace. “Reckon she’s well rid o’ him, though. Don’t sound like the sort o’ man yuh’d want a young girl travelin round with. What was he like?”

“Tall, good-lookin’, foreign-appearin’ hombre. Talked pretty good range language though, and he sure could fork a hoss. Seemed to have a gnawin’ ambition to coil around all the bootleg liquor there is, though. Outside o’ that, he was all right.”

“De Launay? French name, I reckon.”

“Yeah, I reckon he’d been a soldier in the French army. Got the idea, somehow.”

“Well, he’s gone—and I reckon it’s as well. He won’t be botherin’ the little lady no more. What does she wear a veil for? Been marked any?”

Sucatash was troubled. “Don’t know, pop. Never 180 seen her face. Ought to be a sure-enough chiquita, if it’s up to the rest of her. D’jever hear a purtier voice?”

The old man caught the note of enthusiasm. “Yuh better go slow, son,” he said, dryly. “I reckon she’s all right—but yuh don’t really know nothin’.”

“Shucks!” retorted his son, calmly. “I don’t have to know nothin’. She can run an iron on me any time she wants to. I’m lassoed, thrown an’ tied, a’ready.”

“Which yuh finds me hornin’ in before she makes any selection, yuh mottled-topped son of a gun!” Dave warmly put in. “I let’s that lady from France conceal her face, her past and any crimes she may have committed, is committin’ or be goin’ to commit, and I hereby declares myself for her forty ways from the Jack, fer anything from matrimony to murder.”

“Shucks,” said the old man, “you-all are mighty young.”

“Pop,” declared the Wallace heir, solemnly, “this here French lady is clean strain and grades high. Me and Dave may be young, but we ain’t making no mistake about her. She has hired herself a couple of hands, I’m telling you.”

Solange appeared at this moment, coming in with Mrs. Wallace, who was smiling in an evident agreement with her son. Mr. Wallace, while inclined to reserve judgment, had all the chivalry of his kind and stepped forward to greet her. But he paused 181 a little uncertainly as he noticed that she had removed her veil. For a moment he looked at her in some astonishment, her unusual coloring affecting him as it did all those who observed it for the first time. The first glance resulted in startlement and the feeling that there was something uncanny about her, but as the deep eyes met his own and the pretty mouth smiled at him from beneath the glinting pale halo of her hair, he drew his breath in a long sigh of appreciation and admiration. His wife, looking at him with some deprecation, as though fearing an adverse judgment, smiled as his evident conquest became apparent. Standing near him the two boys stared and stared, something like awe in their ingenuous faces.

“Ma’am,” said Wallace, in his courtly manner, “we’re sure proud to welcome you. Which there ain’t many flowers out hereaways, and if there was there wouldn’t be none to touch you. It sure beats me why you ever wear a veil at all.”

Solange laughed and blushed. “Merci, monsieur! But that is exquisite! Still, it is not all that flatter me in that way. There are many who stare and point and even some who make the sign of the evil eye when they see this impossible ensemble. And the women! Mon Dieu! They ask me continually what chemist I patronize for the purpose of bleaching my hair.”

“Cats!” said Mrs. Wallace, with a sniff. 182