Allison went back to Blue Stone Cañon. It was as as the recurrent sun that she should do so. Her whole nature was stirred to the depths by what she had found in the lonely .  
The mystery of the thing her, set her young mind hunting for its solution. And the little boy with his weazened face and bright brown eyes at her tender heart .
 
He was a beautiful, small creature despite his thinness and his poverty. There was intelligence in the broad forehead under the long, loose, unkempt, dark curls, capacity for affection in the mobile lips and a terrible hunger for love in the whole little face.
 
For four days, “hand-running” as her mother said, the girl went to the cañon. The friendship with tropical speed, so that she need not search for her now, but found it coming to meet her, peering around this , watching from that vantage point.
 
When she held out her arms to the child these last two times he had come leaping into them to cling to her neck in gladness, while the Collie, fast friend by this time and to his sacred charge, on her knee.
 
But on the fifth golden day trouble was in the atmosphere.
 
Sonny came with head and a of sorrow in his small brows.
 
“Why, what’s the matter with my little man?” said the girl, kneeling and holding him off to scan him searchingly. “Tell Nance, Sonny. What is it?”
 
And Sonny, dissolved in tears upon the instant, hiding his face in Nance’s neck.
 
“I—I had—” he hiccoughed, “to—to tell—Brand—a a—lie! An awful lie! And Brand, he—hates a !”
 
“A lie! Why, how—why——”
 
“He found your horse’s tracks down the cañon and—he asked me if I saw—any—any one strange,” wept the child.
 
Nance sat down and took the boy in her lap.
 
The thing was coming to a .
 
She was with someone’s private business, of that she was sure, both from her own reasoning and her mother’s warning, and maybe she had no right to do so, but her sweet mouth set itself into stubborn lines as she fell to smoothing the little head, damp with the ardours of its owner’s .
 
“Stop crying, honey,” she softly, “and let Nance rock you like this.”
 
She tucked her heels under her and, holding the child in the comfortable lap thus formed, began to sway her body back and for all the world as if she sat in a cushioned rocker.
 
What is there about a rocking woman with a child’s head on her breast to the sorrows of the world?
 
The swaying motion soon checked Sonny’s and she fell to singing to him, adding her voice to the mysterious voices of the cañon in the lilt and fall of an old camp-meeting brought forth from her memories of Missouri. And presently, when its spell had the , she raised him up and fed him cookies made for the occasion, a sugary if ever there was one.
 
Dirk, too, was not to this seduction, his pale eyes glowing with desire.
 
“Tell me, Sonny,” said Nance, “does Brand cook for you?”
 
“Sure,” said the child, “sure he does—but he’s gone all day and we get awful hungry ’fore he comes at night.”
 
“I should think so!” thought Nance grimly, “two meals a day! When a little child should eat whenever it’s hungry, to grow! This precious Brand is about due for an .”
 
Aloud she said:
 
“Sonny, I’m going to stay with you all day—and I’m going to wait and see Brand.”
 
The boy was aghast at this statement, and it was plain from the he showed that it was .
 
“If you do,” he said , “maybe Brand will take me away again and—and I’ll never see you any more.”
 
But Nance had other plans and she shook her head.
 
That was a lovely day. It was warmer than usual, since summer was stepping down the slopes of the lonely hills, and the strangely sorted trio in Blue Stone Cañon enjoyed it to the full.
 
They explored far up the narrow , the child holding to the girl’s hand and skipping happily, the Collie pacing beside them, a step to the left, two steps to the rear.
 
They watched the waving in the sunlit pools at noon, and in a riffle to find barnacles under rocks that Nance might show Sonny the tiny creature which built such a wonderful little house of infinitesimal sticks and .
 
But as the sun dropped over toward the west and the shadows deepened in the great gorge, Nance began to feel the loneliness, the cold silence, the oppression of the unpeopled .
 
The voices seemed to raise their tones, to become menacing. More and more she realized what it must mean to a child left alone in the cañon, and a deep and rising indignation within her.
 
This Brand fellow, now—he must be cold-blooded as they made them, cruel—no, Sonny loved him. He could not be exactly that.
 
But what sort of man could he be?
 
She held the child close in her warm arms as she rocked again and pondered the problem. She did not know what she intended to say to him, once she faced him, but of one thing she was certain—he would know, in no uncertain terms, indeed, what a thing it was to leave a child alone in Blue Stone Cañon—alone, to listen to its mysterious voices, to feel its chill and its menace of shadows!
 
Why, it was a wonder the little mind did not crack with strain, the small heart break with fear!
 
Unconsciously she hugged Sonny tighter, making of her body, as it were, a between him and all harm, seeming to challenge the world for his possession. It was astonishing how the child had crept into her heart in these few short days—how hungrily her arms had closed about him. She had made his cause her own high-handedly—perhaps without reason.
 
She was thinking of these things when the Collie barked sharply and leaped away in welcome. Nance flung a startled glance over her shoulder—and got to her feet, sliding the boy down beside her, an arm still about his ragged shoulders.
 
A man stood at the corner of the of stone beyond the pool.
 
He was tall, somewhere around six feet, a horseman born by his build, narrow of and flat of . He was clad in garments almost as much the worse for wear as Sonny’s—a blue shirt and corduroy tucked into boots. But Nance saw in that first swift glance that these habiliments were different from those of their like which McKane sold in Cordova, that seemed made for the man who wore them, so had they fitted him once.
 
Under a peaked sombrero with a chin-strap run in a bone slide, a pair of dark eyes bored into Nance’s, unsmiling. A very dark face, almost Indian in clean-cut feature and contour, with repressed lips and thin , completed the picture.
 
The newcomer did not speak, but stood holding the bit of a handsome, huge, black horse.
 
“Brand!” called the boy, “Oh, Brand!”
 
At that name Nance Allison found her tongue.
 
“I’ve been waiting for you,” she said calmly, “I’m glad you’ve come.”
 
“Yes?” he said in a singularly deep, sweet voice.
 
That voice disconcerted Nance upon the instant, stole some of her fire, so to speak. She had been ready to tackle him on the issue at once, to fight, if necessary, with a flood of reasons and protests against his treat............