Hazel laughed.

"I wouldn't shoot her up, but--I'd do all I knew to beat her."

"Just so."

"After what's happened to us here I guess human nature isn't going to find a champion in me," Hazel went on. "Still, it's pretty hard to lose your faith in human nature that way."

"Lose? Who said 'lose'?" cried the man, with a cordial laugh. "Not I.

If I suddenly found it 'honest,' why, I'd hate to go on living. Human nature's got to be just as it is. Honesty lies in Nature. That's the honesty that folks talk about and dream about. It isn't practicable in human life. Dishonesty is the leavening that makes honesty, in the abstract, palatable. Say, think of it--if we were all honest like idealists talk of. What would we have worth living for? Do you know what would happen? Why, we'd all be sitting around making hymns for everybody else to sing, till there was such an almighty hullabaloo we'd all get crazy and have to sign a petition to get it stopped. We'd all be fixed up in a sort of white suit that wouldn't ever need a laundry, and every blamed citizen would start right in to turn the world into a sort of hell by always telling the truth. Just think what it would mean if you had to tell some friend of yours what you thought of her for sneaking your latest beau."

"It certainly would be liable to cause a deal of trouble," laughed Hazel.

"Trouble? I should say." The millionaire chuckled softly as he returned his cigar to his mouth. "Say, I was reading the obituary of a preacher--my wife's favorite--the other day. He lost his grip on life and fell through. That reporter boy was bright, and I wondered when I was reading what he'd have said if he'd spoke the truth as he saw it.

To read that obituary you'd think that preacher feller was the greatest saint ever lived. I felt I could have wept over that poor feller, the talk was so elegant and poetic. I just felt the worst worm ever lived beside that preacher. I felt I ought to spend the last five dollars I had to fix his grave up with pure white lilies, if I had to go without food to do it. It was fine. But the writer never said a word about that preacher living in a swell house in Fifth Avenue, and the $20,000 he took every year for his job, and the elegant automobile he chased around to the houses of his rich congregation in. If he'd died in the slums on the east side I guess that newspaper wouldn't ever have heard of him, and that writer wouldn't have got dollars for the pretty language it was his job to scratch together for such an occasion."

"It doesn't sound nice put that way," sighed Hazel. "I suppose it's all competition even trying to make folks live right. I suppose that preacher was successful in his calling--the same as you are in yours.

I suppose his human nature was no different to other folks'."

"That's it. Life's splendidly dishonest and a perfect sham. Come to think of it, Ananias must have been all sorts of a great man to be singled out of a world of liars. On the other hand, he'd have had some rival in the feller who first accused George Washington of never lying.

Psha! life's a great play, and I'd hate it to be different from what it is. We're all just as dishonest as we can be and still keep out of penitentiary: which makes me feel mighty sorry for them that don't.

From the fisherman to the Sunday-school teacher we're all liars, and if you charged us with it we'd deny it, or worse, and thereby add further proof to the charge. I've thought a deal over this hold-up, and it seems to me those guys bluffed us some."

"You mean about the--ransom," said Hazel, the last sign of amusement dying swiftly out of her eyes.

"Why, yes." The millionaire smoked in silence for some moments. Then quite suddenly he removed the cigar from between his lips. "Maybe you don't know I'm working on a big land scheme in these parts. It seems to me some bright gang intend to roll me for my wad. I don't guess Slosson's in it."

"Then who is it, sir?" demanded the girl, with unconscious sharpness.

The man's steady eyes surveyed her through their half-closed lids. He shook his head.

"I can't just say--yet. We'll find out in good time." His smile was quietly confident. "Anyway, for the moment some one's got the drop on me, and I'll just have to sit around. But--it's pretty tough on you, Miss--Miss----"

"Mallinsbee," said Hazel, without thinking.

"Mallinsbee?"

The man's gray eyes became suddenly alert, and Hazel felt like killing herself. She believed, in that one unguarded moment, she had ruined everything. She held her breath and turned quickly towards the setting sun, lest her face should betray her.

Then her terror passed as she heard the quiet, kindly laugh of the man as he began speaking again.

"Well, Miss Mallinsbee, here we are, and here we've just got to stay.

I came here to get the best of a deal. We're all out to do some one or something, somehow or somewhere. It don't much matter who. And when a man acts right he don't squeal when the other feller's on top. He just sits around till it's his move, and then he'll try and get things back.

I'm not squealing. It's my turn to sit around--that's all. Meanwhile, with the comforts at my disposal--good wines, good cigars and mountain air--I'm having some vacation. If it weren't for that darned Chink with his detestable blue suit I'd----"

"Hush!" Hazel had turned and held up a warning finger.

In response the man glanced sharply about him. There, sure enough, standing silent and immovable at the corner of the building, was the hated vision of blue with its crowning features of dull yellow.

James Carbhoy flung himself back in his rocker. All the humor and pleasure had been banished from his strong face, and only disgust remained.

"Oh, hell!" he exclaimed, and flung his cigar with all his force in the direction of the intruder.

CHAPTER XXII

ON THE TRAIL

It was a night to remember, if for nothing else for the exquisite atmospheric conditions prevailing. The moon was at its full, like some splendid jewel radiating a silvery peace upon a slumbering world. The jeweled sky suggested the untold wealth of an infinite universe. The perfumed air filled lungs and nostrils with a beatific joy in living, and the darkened splendor of the crowding hills inspired a reverence in the human heart so profound, that it left scarce a place for the smallness of mundane hopes and yearnings. The splendor, the breadth of beauty sank into the human soul and left the spirit straining at its earthly bonds, and gazing with longing towards the infinite power which ordered its existence.

For ten miles of the journey from the old ranch-house Hazel rode under the sublime influence of feelings so inspired. Nothing of the conditions were new to her. The mountain nights in summer were as much a part of her existence as was the ranching life of her home. She knew them as she knew the work that filled her daylight hours. But their effect upon her never varied--never weakened. No familiarity with them could change that feeling of the infinite sublimity somewhere beyond the narrow confines of human life. She drank in the deep draughts of perfect life, she gazed abroad with shining eyes of simple happiness on the splendid world, and a superlative thankfulness to the Creator of all things that life had been thus vouchsafed her uplifted her heart and all that was spiritual within her.

The journey to her home was twenty miles, but her favorite mare possessed wings so far as its mistress was concerned. The distance was all too short for the splendid young body, and that youthful mood of delight. Hazel reveled in the expenditure of the energy required, as the mare, beneath her, seemed to revel in the physical effort of the journey.

For the greater part of the road the cobwebs of affairs she was engaged upon left Hazel indifferent. The delight of life left no room for them. But after the half way had been passed there came to her flashes of thought which reduced her feelings to a more human mood.

Nor was that mood of the easiest. She experienced feelings of disquiet, even alarm. She felt vexed, and a great resentment, and even genuine anger, began to take possession of her. But these were interspersed with moments when a certain irresponsibility and humor would not be denied, and underlying all and every other emotion was a great passionate longing, which she scarcely admitted even to herself.

Her mind was fixed upon two men: father and son. For the time at least, they were the pivot of all things worldly for her. In her thoughts the son possessed attributes little short of a demi-god, while the father had become a being endowed with a deep, reflected regard.

There was room in her woman's heart for both in their respective places. She knew she loved them, and her variations of mood were inspired by the cruelly farcical atmosphere of the position surrounding them both. She was angry with Gordon, bitterly angry at one moment, at the next she reveled in the exquisite impudence of his daring. At one moment her woman's tender pity went out to the big-hearted man who had been submitted to such indignities by his own son and herself, and all those concerned in the conspiracy, and, at the next, she found herself smiling at the humor of his attitude towards his persecutors. Then, too, over all these complications of feeling she was stirred with alarm at that painful memory of the unguarded moment, when, lulled by her interest in the millionaire's talk, she had admitted her name to him.

Visions of hideous possibilities rose before her eyes. If he should chance to know her father's name. Why not? Surely he knew. But after that one sharp interrogation he had given no sign.

She sighed a sort of half-hearted relief, but remained unconvinced. It was this last contingency which had inspired her night journey home.

She had ridden out the moment she had been certain that their captive had retired for the night.

There were still some eight miles to go before the ranch would be reached when Hazel experienced a fright, which left her ready to turn and flee back over the way she had come as swiftly as the legs of her mare could carry her.

On clearing a bluff of spruce, around which her course lay, in the full radiance of the moon's high noon, she suddenly beheld a horseman riding towards her, a ghostly figure moving soundlessly over the high grass.

Such was the effect of this vision upon her, that, beyond being able to bring her mare to an abrupt halt, panic left her paralysed. In all her years she had never encountered a horseman riding late at night in the mountains. Who was he? Who could he be? And an eerie feeling set her flesh creeping at the ghostliness and noiselessness of his coming.

She sat there stupidly, her pretty cheeks ashen in the moonlight. And all the time the man was coming nearer and nearer, traveling the same trail she would have done had she pursued her course. Then an abject terror surged upon her. He must meet her!

In an instant her paralysis left her, and she gathered her reins to turn her mare about. But the maneuver was never effected. She had suddenly recognized the horse the man was riding. It was Sunset. The next moment she further recognized the broad shoulders of the man in the saddle, and a glad cry broke from her, and she urged her mare on to meet him.

"Gordon!" she cried, in a world of delight and relief as she came up with him.

"You, Hazel?" came the joyous response of her ghostly visitor.

"You just scared me all to death," protested the girl, as the big chestnut ranged up beside her.

"I did?" Gordon was smiling tenderly down at the pretty figure, so fascinating in the moonlight as it sat astride the brown mare.

"My, but I thought--I--oh, I don't know what I thought. But what are you doing around--now?"

The girl was smiling happily enough. Even in the silver of the moonlight it was obvious that the color had returned to her cheeks.

"I was going to ask you that," returned Gordon. "But I guess I best tell you things first." Then he began to laugh. "I was coming out to see you, but--not you only. Say, I'm just the weakest conspirator ever started out to trap a mouse. Look at me. Say, get a good look. It isn't the sort of thing you'll see every time you open your eyes. I was sick to death feeling the old dad was shut up a prisoner, and I felt I must get along, even if it was only just to get a peek, and be sure he wasn't suffering."