“That looks like business,” said Caleb Powell. “Your Mr. Dobson—I know him well. So he made you his agent? Well, well! That’s singular. But men do strange things. I suppose he sent a contract?”
“Yes, yes.” She was eager now. “Here it is.”
“Well,” he said quietly.
Then turning to the former guard, he said; “You’ll not be wanting anything further of the girl, Jim?”
“Reckon not,” the man drawled.
“Then, Miss—er—”
“Ormsby,” she volunteered.
“Then, Miss Ormsby, if you’ll be so kind as to mount behind me, I’ll take you down to the house. We’ll fix up the papers. After that we’ll have a bite to eat and I’ll send you over the mountain.”
The hours that followed were long-to-be-remembered. The signing of the papers, the talk on the cool veranda, a perfect dinner, then the long, long ride home over the mountains on a perfect horse with a guide and guard at her side, and all this crowned by the consciousness of a wonderful success after days of perils and threatened failure; all these seemed a dream indeed.
One thing Florence remembered distinctly. She had said to Caleb Powell: