After that, he perched up on the little rock pinnacle just behind the
station, and stared down the mountain toward Toll-Gate Flat, where she
lived. He saw Hank ride into the balsam thicket; and he, too, thought
of several things he regretted not having said to Hank. What rotten
luck it was that he should be held up here on that pinnacle while Hank
Brown could ride at his leisure down into that tiny valley! The
government ought to gather up all the Hank Browns in the country and
put them up on such places as these, and let decent fellows do the
riding around.

Down there, beyond the trail, on a slope where the manzanita was not
quite so matted together, he saw something move slowly. Then it
stopped, and he got a gleam of light, the reflection, evidently of
some bright object. He lifted the telescope and focussed it, and his
heart came leaping up into his throat just as the figure came leaping
into close view through the powerful lense.

It was Marion Rose, up by the hydrometer that looked something like a
lone beehive perched on a wild slope by itself. She was sitting on a
rock with her feet crossed, and she was inspecting her chin in the
tiny mirror of her vanity bag. Some blemish--or more likely an insect
bite, from the way her fingertip pressed carefully a certain point of
her chin--seemed to hold all her attention. It was the sun flashing on
the bit of mirror that had made the gleam.

Jack watched her hungrily; her slim shape, leaning negligently
sidewise; her hat pushed back a little; her hair, the color of ripe
corn, fluffed where the wind had blown it; the clear, delicate, creamy
tint of her skin, her mouth curved in soft, red lines that held one's