“I’m going to marry, too—someone who loves me, I’m sure, though she’s never told me. I’m going to marry you, little sweetheart!”

He leaned toward her before she could understand his meaning and, flinging his free arm around her, pressed his lips on hers.

With a wild cry like some terrified creature, Hazel tried to pull herself away. Finding herself held tight, she lifted the hand holding the whip and slashed the air blindly about her. Her eyes closed; her heart swelled with fear. She felt suddenly repulsed by this man she’d respected deeply. She lashed out again with her whip, not seeing what she struck.

Hamar’s horse reared and plunged, almost unseating his rider. As he struggled to keep his seat, he released the girl, and the second cut of the whip stung across his eyes. He cried out. The horse reared again and sent him sprawling on the ground, his hands to his face.

Knowing only she was free, Hazel instinctively struck her own horse on the flank. The little beast turned sharply to the right from the trail he was following and darted across the level plateau. It was all Hazel could do to keep her seat.

She’d sometimes enjoyed a run in the park with her groom at a safe distance behind her. She was proud of her ability to ride and could take fences as well as her young brother. But a run like this across an undefined space, on a creature of speed like the wind, goaded by fear, was different. She tried to hold on to the saddle with shaking hands, for the reins were flying in the breeze. But each moment she expected to lose her slight hold and find herself lying huddled on the plain with the horse far in the distance.

Her lips grew white and cold, her breath short and painful. She strained her eyes to look ahead at the constantly receding horizon. Was there no end? Would they ever reach civilization? How long could a horse stand a pace like this? And how long could she hold on?

Off to the right at last she thought she saw a building. In a second they neared a cabin, standing alone on the great plain with sagebrush in patches about the door and a neat rail fence around it. She could see one window at the end and a tiny chimney at the back. Could anyone live in such a forlorn place?

Summoning her strength as they passed, she yelled out. But the wind caught the feeble effort and flung it into the vast spaces like a worthless fragment of sound.

Tears stung their way into her wide, dry eyes. The last hairpin left its mooring and slipped down to earth. The loose golden hair streamed back on the wind like hands of despair clutching wildly for help, and the jaunty green riding cap was snatched by the breeze and hung on a bush not fifty feet from the cabin gate. But the horse rushed on with the frightened girl still clinging to the saddle.

Chapter 2

The Man

About noon the same day, John Brownleigh stopped his horse on the edge of a flattopped mesa and looked away to the clear blue mountains. He’d lived in Arizona for nearly three years, but the desert hadn’t lost its charm. Now his eyes sought the vast distances stretching in every direction. More than a hundred miles away, the mountains rose distinctly in the clear air but seemed only a short journey from there.

Below him ledges of rock were piled one upon another in yellow and gray, crimson and green, with sunlight playing over them and turning their colors into a blaze of glory. Beyond was the sand, broken here and there by sagebrush, greasewood, or cactus rearing its prickly spines grotesquely. Off to the left stood pink-tinted cliffs and a little farther, dark conelike buttes. Low brown-and-white hills stretched away to the right to the petrified forest, where great tracts of fallen tree trunks and chips lay locked in glistening stone.