CHAPTER 3. AN INVITATION GIVEN AND ACCEPTED

And already she had met him. Not only met him, but saved him from
the just vengeance about to fall upon him. She had not yet seen
her own ranch, had not spoken to a single one of her employees,
for it had been a part of her plan to drop in unexpected and
examine the situation before her foreman had a chance to put his
best foot forward. So she had started alone from Gimlet Butte
that morning in her machine, and had come almost in sight of the
Lazy D ranch houses when the battle in the coulee invited her to
take a hand.

She had acted on generous impulse, and the unforeseen result had
been to save this desperado from justice. But the worst of it was
that she could not find it in her heart to regret it. Granted
that he was a villain, double-dyed and beyond hope, yet he was
the home of such courage, such virility, that her unconsenting
admiration went out in spite of herself. He was, at any rate, a
MAN, square-jawed, resolute, implacable. In the sinuous trail of
his life might lie arson, robbery, murder, but he still held to
that dynamic spark of self-respect that is akin to the divine.
Nor was it possible to believe that those unblinking gray eyes,
with the capability of a latent sadness of despair in them,
expressed a soul entirely without nobility. He had a certain
gallant ease, a certain attractive candor, that did not consist
with villainy unadulterated.