Hazel's eyes were tenderly regarding the great creature in the bright moonlight. She had been so recently angry at this son's heartless action, that his expression of contrition made her feel all the more tender towards him.

"He's in bed, and--I'd guess he's snoring elegantly by now," she said, with a smile. "I--I waited to start out till he was in bed." Then her eyes met his. "What were you coming to--see me for?"

The direct challenge very nearly precipitated matters. Gordon had excuses enough for seeing her, but only one real purpose. He hesitated before replying.

"We've made good," he said at last, by way of subterfuge, and the girl drew a deep breath of joyous content.

"You've--made--good?" she questioned, more in the way of reassuring herself than desiring a reply.

Gordon moved his horse so that she could turn about.

"Let's go back to the--prison," he said, his words charged with the excited delight stirring within him.

"Yes, we've made good." The girl turned her mare about and the two moved on the way she had already come, side by side. "Listen, while I tell you. Say, I could sort of shout it around the hill-tops--if they weren't so snowy and cold. Snake's Fall is just a surging land market for us at Buffalo. There are real estate offices opening everywhere, and everybody you meet on the sidewalk is a broker of some sort. The Bude and Sideley folk turned their holdings loose directly we got the surveyors and engineers of the railroad up, and the folks all jumped.

Then the men at Snake's, who held in ours, followed suit. But your father, bless him, held tight. The boom fairly rose to a shriek, and we've been fighting to sit tight, and let the prices go up skywards.

Then we had a meeting, and your father loosened up a bit. Just to keep the spurt on. Meanwhile I've handled things down east, and kept the wires singing. The railroad have started a great advertising campaign at my orders. The coal company, too, are talking Snake's Fall, and Buffalo Point. In a month there'll be such a rush as only America, and this continent generally knows how to make. Even now sites are changing hands at ridiculous prices. Meanwhile I've got the railroad busy. Already ten construction trains have come through, and they've started on the new depot." He drew a deep sigh of satisfaction. Then in a sort of shamefaced manner he went on. "But I've had to weaken in the old dad's direction. I can't make good and leave him out all together. You see, that play of Slosson's in Snake's will have to be made good, and my father will have to make it that way. So I've got your father to give me a six months' option on a stretch of land adjoining the coalpits which he hadn't ceded to the Bude people. You see, if there's coal there it'll put my father right with the game, and we shan't have hurt him any. Meanwhile things will go on, and we'll have to keep the old dad for another month. Then I sell, and----"

"You'll have won out," broke in Hazel, her eyes shining in the moonlight. Then a shadow crossed her face. "But when your father knows what you've done? What then?"

Gordon seemed to consider his reply carefully.

"You can leave that to me, Hazel," he said at last, with a whimsical smile. "There's surely got to be a grand finale to this, and when it comes I'll still need your help. Say, why were you riding in to the ranch--at dead of night?"

The abrupt question shocked the girl out of her delighted content. The memory of her trouble came overwhelmingly upon her. But Gordon was waiting.

"You're making good, but I've made pretty bad," she said, thrusting a desire to burst into tears resolutely from her. "I'm just every sort of fool and I--don't know how much damage I haven't done. Everything's gone right until this evening. Hip-Lee has just been as near perfect as a Chinaman can be. We've carried out all our plans right through, and I've never been near your father without Hip-Lee looking on. That is--until this evening." The girl sighed. The confession of her blundering was hard to make. "It was this way," she went on presently.

"Your father was out walking. I hadn't seen him return. I was in the kitchen fixing his supper, and it was sticky hot, and I just hated the flies, so I went out for a breath of air. Hip-Lee had been playing his spy game on your father. Well, I just stood out front of the house taking a look at the hills, and wishing I was amongst their snows, when your father spoke. He had got back, and was sitting outside the house, and, maybe, like me he was yearning for that snow. Well, I just couldn't run away--so we talked. I guess we'd talked quite awhile, and I'd kind of forgotten things, and in the middle of his talk he started to address me by my name, and got as far as 'Miss.' Then, without a thought, I spoke my name. He just seemed startled, but never said a word about it, and now I'm worried to death. Was there ever such----"

The girl broke off, and it seemed to Gordon, in spite of her attempted smile, she was very near tears. Instantly he smothered his own feelings of alarm at her story and endeavored to console her. He laughed, but in Hazel's hyper-sensitive condition of anxiety, his laugh lacked its usual buoyancy.

"That's nothing to worry over," he said. "I'd say if your name had meant anything to him he wouldn't have given you breathing time before you'd learned a heap of things that wouldn't have sounded pretty.

Dad's no end of a sport, but when he gets a punch, and the fellow who gives it him don't vanish quick, he's got a way of hitting back mighty hard. I don't guess that break's going to figure any in our play. He never said a word?"

"Not a word." Hazel tried to take comfort, but still remained unconvinced. "Anyway what could he do?"

Gordon remained serious for some moments. Then his eyes lit again.

"Not a thing," he said emphatically, and Hazel knew he meant it.

For some time they rode on in silence, and thought was busy with them both. Hazel was thinking of so many things, all of which somehow focussed round the man at her side, and her ardent desire to obey his lightest commands in the schemes of his fertile brain. Gordon had dismissed every other thought from his mind but the delightful companionship of this ride, which had come all unexpectedly. The girl's mare led slightly, and the sober chestnut kept his nose on a level with her shoulder, and thus Gordon was left free to regard the girl he loved without fear of embarrassment to her. But somehow Hazel was not unaware of his regard. A curious subconsciousness left her with the feeling that her every movement was observed, and a pleasant, excited nervousness began to stir her. She hastily broke the silence.

"You said you'd still need my help when--the grand finale came," she demanded.

"Sure," came the prompt reply. Then very slowly the man added; "I can't do anything without your help--now."

The girl glanced round quickly.

"You mean--with your father a prisoner?"

The man's smile deepened, and his blue eyes gazed thoughtfully, ardently, into the hazel eyes, which, in a moment, became hidden from him.

"I don't think I meant--quite that," he said.

The girl offered no reply, and the man went on.

"You see, we have become sort of partners in most everything, haven't we? I don't seem to think of anything without you being in it." Then he laughed, a little nervous laugh. "I don't try to either. Say, I went out to the cattle station, and had a look at Slosson the other day. The boys have got him pretty right, and--I felt sorry for him."

"Why?" Hazel asked her question without thinking. She somehow felt incapable of thought just now. She felt like one drifting upon some tide which was beyond her control, and the only guiding hand that mattered was this man's.

Gordon gave one of his curious short laughs, which might have meant anything.

"I don't know," he said. Then: "Yes, I do though. Think of a fellow who's had his business queered, who's staked a big gamble and lost, not only that, but the girl he's crazy about, and meanwhile is rounded up in a shack that wouldn't keep a summer shower out, and seems as though it was set up on purpose by some crazy genius as a sort of playground for every sort of wind ever blew. Say, if I lost my partner now, I'd---- Guess our partnership ought to expire in a month. This play will be through then."

"Yes."

With all her desire to talk on indifferently, Hazel could find no word to add to the monosyllable. She was trembling with a delightful apprehension she could not check. And somehow she had no desire to check it. This man was all powerful to sway her emotions, and she knew it. The moments were growing almost painful in the tenseness of her emotions.

"Another month. It's--awful for me to think of."

"Is it?"

The inanity of her remark would have made Hazel laugh at any other time. Now, it passed her by, its meaninglessness conveying nothing with the submerging of her humor in the sea of stronger emotions.

Gordon urged his horse to draw level with the mare. Then he deliberately drew it down to a walk on the rustling grass, and Hazel followed his example without protest. All about them was the delicate silver tracery of the moonlight through the trees. The warmth of the perfumed night air possessed a seductiveness only equaled by the night beauties of the scene about them. It was such a moment when the most timorous lover must become emboldened, and emulate the bravest. But Gordon knew no timidity. His only fear was for failure. Had he realized the tumult which his words had stirred within this girl's bosom he might well have flung all hesitation to the winds. As it was he threw the final cast with all the strength of his virile, impetuous nature.

"Another month. Must it end then, Hazel?" He reached out and seized, with gentle firmness, the girl's bridle hand. "Must it? Say, can't it be partners--for life?" His eyes were very tender, but their humor was still lurking in their depths. He leaned towards her and the girl's hand remained unresistingly in his. "D'you know, dear, I sort of feel to-night I'd like to have a dozen Slossons standing around waiting, while I scrapped 'em all in turn for you. Maybe that don't tell you much. It can't mean anything to you. It means this to me. It means I just want to be the fellow who's got to see to it that life runs as smooth as the wheels of a Pullman for you. It means I don't care a thing for anything else in the world but you, not even this play we're at now. I guess I just loved you the day I first saw you, and have gone on loving you worse and worse ever since, till I don't guess there's any doctor, but having you always with me, can save me from an early grave." Somehow the two horses had come to a standstill. Nor were they urged on. "I just want you, Hazel, all the time," Gordon went on, more and more tenderly. "You'll never get to know how badly I want you. Will you--shall it be--partners--always?"

The girl was gazing out over the moonlight scene so that Gordon could see nothing of the light of happiness shining in her pretty eyes. All he knew was the trembling of the hand he still held in his. Then, suddenly, while he waited, he felt the girl's other hand, soft, warm, full of that quiet strength which he knew to be hers, close over his, and a wild thrill swept through his whole body.

"Is it 'yes'?" he demanded, with a passionate pressure of his hand, and a great light burning in his eyes. "Mine! Mine! For--as long as we live?"

The girl still made no verbal reply, but she bowed her head and gently raised his hand, and tenderly pressed it to her soft bosom. In an instant she lay crushed in his arms while the two horses, with heads together, seemed lost in a friendly discussion of the extraordinary proceedings going on between their riders.

What they thought about them was apparently on the whole favorable, for presently, with mute expressions of good will, their handsome heads drew apart and lowered significantly. The next moment they were enjoying a pleasant siesta, such as only a four-footed creature can accomplish standing without risk to life and limb.

Half an hour later they were wide awake and full of bustling activity.

The closed heels on their saddle cinchas warned them that even lovers'

madness has its limits of duration, and that the practical affairs of life must inevitably become paramount in the end.

So they answered the call, and raced down the trail in the cool of the night.

CHAPTER XXIII

IN NEW YORK