scouring the plain like the heroine of a dime novel.” “No New Mexican girl,” said Conrad as he helped her into the carriage, “thinks she can really ride until she can rope a steer. If you’re going to be such an enthusiastic New Mexican you’ll have to learn tricks of that sort. Get your father to bring you out here some day, and I’ll give you lessons in cowboy riding.” “Agreed! that would be great fun!” she exclaimed, smiling down at him, her eyes twinkling and the dimples dancing in and out of her cheeks. “We’ll come out, won’t we, [Pg 29]daddy, after Miss Dent comes. I shall remember your promise, Mr. Conrad.” [Pg 29] Curtis waved a last good-bye as they turned the corner of his corral, and went back to his desk and his interrupted mail. “A mighty good fellow Aleck Bancroft is,” he said in a half-aloud tone. “He doesn’t palaver a lot, but he makes you feel he’s your friend. I wonder if I said too much about Delafield. That check had wound me up and I sure talked more than I meant to.” Long hours of solitude out-of-doors with only a silent plain around him and a silent sky above are likely to make a man so yearn for the sound of a human voice, though it be only his own, that he falls into the habit of thinking aloud. Conrad had the social temperament and it had not taken the wide and silent spaces of earth and air long to engender in him the habit of making companionship out of his own speech. He pulled thoughtfully at his sunburned moustache for a moment as he considered the matter. “It might have been just as well if I hadn’t said so much,” he went on aloud, “but he’s close-mouthed and a good friend of mine. No, she didn’t hear me—that’s sure. How pretty she is when her eyes twinkle and her dimples come and go! I [Pg 30]hope that wine will come in time for me to take her a bottle the next time I go to Golden. Well, I can call on her, anyway, and apologize because it hasn’t. Hello! Here’s a letter from Littleton! Has he got hold of something new about Delafield?” [Pg 30] “I was down in the northern part of your Territory last week on other business,” he read, “and I happened to meet a man who is, I think, on the trail of the very same person we’re after, though he’s been working it from the other end. If I’m right about it, the man we want is now some prominent and respected citizen of New Mexico, and maybe some good friend—or enemy—of yours at this moment. The man I met is Rutherford W. Jenkins, of Las Vegas. You
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