It was in the evening that he saw her again.  Dick had stopped in the hall on the way to his room to examine a .303 Savage carbine he found propped against the wall.  He had picked the weapon up when a voice above hailed him.  He looked up.  Valencia was leaning across the balustrade of the stairway.

“I want to talk with you, Mr. Gordon.”

“Same here,” he answered promptly.  “I mean I want to talk with you.  Let’s take a walk.”

“No.  You’re not up to a walk.  We’ll drive.  My rig is outside.”

Ten minutes later they were flying over the hard roads packed with rubble from decomposed sandstone.  Neither of them spoke for some time.  He was busy with the reins, and she was content to lean back and watch him.  To her there was something very attractive about the set of his well-modeled head upon the broad shoulders.  He had just been shaved, and the scent of the soap wafted to her a pleasant sense of intimacy with his masculinity.  She could see the line above which the tiny white hairs grew thick on the bronzed cheeks.  A strange delight stirred in her maiden heart, a joy in his physical well-being that longed for closer contact.

None of this reached the surface when she spoke at last.

“I can’t let things go the way you have arranged them, Mr. Gordon.  It isn’t fair.  After the way I and my people have treated you I can’t be the object of such unlimited generosity at your hands.”

“Justice,” he suggested by way of substitution.

“No, generosity,” she insisted.  “Why should you be forced to give way to me?  What have I done any more than you to earn all this?”

“Now you know we’ve all agreed——­”

“Agreed!” she interrupted sharply.  “We’ve taken it for granted that I had some sort of divine right.  When I look into it I see that’s silly.  We’re living in America, not in Spain of the seventeenth century.  I’ve no right except what the law gives me.”

“Well, the law’s clear now.  I’m tired of being shot at and starved and imprisoned and burned to make a Mexican holiday.  I’m fed up with the excitement your friends have offered me.  Honest, I’m glad to quit.  I don’t want the grant, anyhow.  I’m a miner.  We’ve just made a good strike in the Last Dollar.  I’m going back to look after it.”

“You can’t make me believe anything of the kind, Mr. Gordon.  I know you’ve made a strike, but you had made it before you ever came to the valley.  Mr. Davis told me so.  We simply couldn’t drive you out.  That’s all humbug.  You want me to have it—­and I’m not going to take it.  That’s all there is to it, sir.”

He smiled down upon her.  “I never did see anyone so obstinate and so changeable.  As long as I wanted the land you were going to have it; now I don’t want it you won’t take it.  Isn’t that just like a woman?”

“You know why I won’t take it.  From the very first you’ve played the better part.  We’ve mistreated you in every way we could.  Now you want to drown me in a lake of kindness.  I just can’t accept it.  If you want to compromise on a fair business basis I’ll do that.”