“Come here to live?” said Tharon, “a settler? Goin’ to homestead?”
He shook his head.
“No.”
A quick suspicion seized her. Perhaps Washington was like Arizona, a place from which they imported gun men. Only this man wore no gun, and he had not a look of prowess. No. This man was different.
“Then what you goin’ to do?” she asked as frankly as a child.
“First,” he said, “I’m going up where the pines grow yonder and build myself a house,” and he waved a hand toward the east where the ranges rolled up to the thickening fringes of the forest that marched back into the ramparts of the trail-less hills. 91
“I want to find an ideal spot, a glade where the pines stand round the edges, with a spring of living water running down, and where I can look down and over the magnificent reaches of Lost Valley. I shall make me a home, and then I shall work.”
“Ride?” asked the girl succinctly.
“Ride? Of course, that will be a great part of that work.”
“Who for?”