The girl's hand was outstretched for the ring, and almost mechanically the man turned and dropped it into the upturned palm. "Well, Miss Nell, I've warned you, and I'm sure if Mr. Hull were here that he'd feel just as I do." His voice grew tense. "I can't go with you today, for I've got to go over the other side of the mountain to see if I can find those lost horses, and won't be back till dark."
The girl, scarcely heeding his words, took the ring, and in a mock-heroic sort of way kissed and slipped it on to her engagement finger, a gleam of mischief in her eyes, at which action Cameron, stung almost to madness, smothered a groan, and strode across the porch, his spurs clanking on the floor, gathering up his hair rope as he went. With one hand on the pommel of the saddle and the other on the pony's mane, he leaped lightly into his seat without aid of stirrup and, bringing the coil of rope down on the animal's flank, went off down the line of wire fence on a dead run, and soon turned out of sight around a low hill in the valley.
The girl watched him in silence until he was lost to view, and then, with a gay laugh, turned into the room, saying, "Poor Cam, what fun it is to tease him!"
A moment later, when Juan appeared at the door with her horse, she pulled on her pretty buckskin gloves, and with a "Goodbye, Mary, I'll be home by noon," to the heavy-faced cook, who stood watching her from the door of the log kitchen, she rode off almost as fast as Cameron, but in a different direction.
Three months before these happenings George Hull had gone down to the little railroad station, some thirty miles from the ranch, to meet his wife's only sister, who was coming to spend the summer with them in Arizona, and from her first day she had taken to the life like a duck to water. She was a fearless horsewoman, and never so happy as when out on the range riding with the cowboys, if they were there, or alone if they were not. Nell Steele was a warm-hearted, impulsive girl, but she could no more help making a slave of every man she met than she could stop breathing.
It was an easy task for her, too, and it mattered not whether it was some high-bred, educated gentleman, or a rough Texas "puncher" who had never in all his life spoken a dozen words to a woman of her class. And naturally with such surroundings, with men unused to women's wiles, she soon had the whole country at her feet.
Of them all, however, young Cameron had by far the worst case of it, and the girl, while in her heart greatly pleased with his attentions, seemed to delight in keeping him in a state of absolute misery by alternately raising him to the very highest pinnacle of happiness, and again dropping him into the bottomless pit of despair. Deep in her heart she knew he was her ideal, but she could not resist the temptation to coquette with and tease him.
Cameron had come west for his health some years before. Too hard application at college had seriously impaired his strength, and he had been ordered to live in the open air for several years. Letters of introduction to George Hull had brought him to this ranch in the high mountain country of northern Arizona, and he had taken to the cowboy life from the very first, until now he was looked upon as one of the most trusted and satisfactory "boys" on the place.
The ranch to which George Hull brought his pretty sister-in-law was located near the line of the Navajo Indian Reservation, and, as the Navajos are great roamers, it was nothing unusual to have them hanging round. One day a party of them came, bringing in some horses the boys had missed for some time. It was Miss Steele's first sight of the Navajo, and she came down to the corral, where they were all gathered, to see them. Among them was a young chief named Chatto, who had attended an Indian school at Albuquerque, and could therefore speak fairly good English. He was a picture of savage finery. Around his waist was buckled a costly belt made of great plates of solid silver; in his ears hung huge silver rings; each arm was clasped by bracelets of the same precious metal; around his neck were yards of the precious silver, turquoise and shell beads so dear to the Navajo heart; and his moccasins and leggings were thickly studded with buttons fashioned from dimes, quarters, and half-dollars. Across his shoulders hung a gaudy Navajo blanket, and his horse's bridle was fairly weighted down with glittering trophies of the Indian silversmith's skill.