From the beginning each was ready, perhaps more than ready, to like the
other. Her eyes, whether they smiled or grew suddenly grave, pleased
him; always were they fearless. He sensed that beneath the external
soft beauty of a very lovely young woman there was a spirit of
hardihood in every sense worthy of the success which she had planned
bare-handed to make for herself, and in the man's estimation no quality
stood higher than a superb independence. On her part, there was first
a definite surprise, then a glow of satisfaction that in this virile
arm of the law there was nothing of the blusterer. She set him down as
a quiet gentleman first, as a sheriff next. She enjoyed his low,
good-humored laugh and laughed back with him, even while she
experienced again the unaccustomed thrill at the sheer physical bigness
of him, the essentially masculine strength of a hardy son of the
southwestern outdoors. Not once had he referred to the affair at the
Casa Blanca or to his part in it; not a question did she ask him
concerning it. He told himself that so utterly human, so perfectly
feminine a being as she must be burning with curiosity; she marvelled
that he could think, speak of anything else. When together they rose
from the table they were alike prepared, should circumstance so direct,
to be friends.

She was going now to call upon the Engles. She had told him that she
had a letter to Mrs. Engle from a common friend in Richmond.

"I don't want to appear to be riding too hard on your trail," he smiled
at her. "But I was planning dropping in on the Engles myself this
evening. They're friends of mine, you know."

She laughed, and as they left the hotel, propounded a riddle for him to
answer: Should Mr. Norton introduce her to Mrs. Engle so that she might