Turning to the unsettled girl beside him, he went on briskly:
"Work guardedly; query us when you have to; be sure of your facts, and consign your soul to God. Do I see you moving?"
And when Farriss looked again he did.
CHAPTER VII: MISS DONOVAN ARRIVES
When the long overland train paused a moment before the ancient box car that served as the depot for the town of Haskell, nestled in the gulch half a mile away, it deposited Miss Stella Donovan almost in the arms of Carson, the station-agent, and he, wary of the wiles of women and the ethics of society, promptly turned her over to Jim Westcott, who had come down to inquire if the station-agent held a telegram for him—a telegram that he expected from the East.
"She oughtn't to hike to the Timmons House alone, Jim," Carson said. "This yere is pay-day up at the big mines, an' the boys are havin' a hell of a time. That's them yellin' down yonder, and they're mighty likely to mix up with the Bar X gang before mornin', bein' how the liquor is runnin' like blood in the streets o' Lundun, and there's half a mile between 'em."
In view of these disclosures, Miss Donovan welcomed the courteous acquiescence of Westcott, whom she judged to be a man of thirty-one, with force and character—these written in the lines of his big body and his square, kind face.
"I'm Miss Stella Donovan of New York," she said directly.
"And I," he returned, with hat off in the deepening gloom, "am Jim
Westcott, who plugs away at a mining claim over yonder."
"There!" laughed the girl frankly. "We're introduced. And I suppose we can start for the Timmons House."