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where did he come across the gold Hamlin bought?"
    "You'll never know, boys," Mulchay said sagely, "and you'll likely never lay eyes on him again. I say we tip the bottle all around and drink one to a gunfighter . . . Rose marie, what's up, lass?" The girl was retreating along the bar, her head bent low, and Mulchay looked around at his friends. "What's gotten into MacKay's niece?" he asked. "What did I say?"
    "Somethin' about us never seein' the fellow again. I don't think that was in the lass's plans for him."
    "You mean she's taken with him?"
    "From the minute he strolled in."
    "With that wildness on him?" Mulchay asked in credulously.
    "A moment ago you were drinking his health."
    "And will again, for he's a man's man. But he's not what any innocent lass should be fillin' her head with."
    "Maybe not," Macintosh said, "but she's gone off into the black night nevertheless."
    Rosemarie fled through the storeroom, her mind in a storm of confusion, and came out onto a dark alley. She found herself next standing in the center of Trail Street, looking in every direction but seeing no sign of Bu chanan.
    "Mister!" she called plaintively, taking a dozen aimless steps north. "Mister!" Her eyes tried to pierce the dark ness, her ears strained for some sound of him. She re traced her steps, went another short distance the other way. "Wait up, mister!" she cried out, feeling even sadder for the very reason she had no name to call him by. She was standing now in the center of Trail Street, a somehow forlorn figure, lost-looking, and made incongruous by the gaily colored bar apron tied at her waist. Beyond her was the familiar front of the Glasgow, beyond that the flicker ing lights of Armston's Dance Palace. She didn't want to serve drinks any more tonight, and she didn't want to be danced with. In fact, she had a vast number of things she didn't want to do, except be alone, and she started walking toward the river.
    A deep voice reached out of the night and caressed her.
    "Want any company?" Buchanan asked.
    "You! You were there all the while?"
    "No, but I wasn't sure which particular mister you were looking for." He came out of the shadows. "Still ain't."
    "I know every other name in Scotstown," she explained quietly.
    'Tom Buchanan."
    "Rosemarie MacKay."
    Silence descended over them and they stood looking at each other steadily, seeing only the character outlines of each other's face, and a great many seconds in time passed between them.
    At last she spoke.
    "Mr. Mulchay said you would not pass this way again."
    "No."
    "You only came by for a bit of fun, didn't you?"
    "Something like that."
    "Are you —do you make your way with the gun?" By her hushed hesitancy Buchanan understood that the ques tion went to the roots of her own principles. He also understood that during these past few moments the smoldering fires of his own healthy desires had been stirred, knew for the first time how keen his loneliness had been on that mountain. But some contrariness in the man would not let him compromise her.
    "I don't make my way with anything," he told her true. "I'm a bum, a saddlebum —" and then the pixie took hold of him and he laughed. "If I owned a saddle, that is," he added.
    And she laughed.
    "You mean you ride without a saddle?"
    "Without a horse."
    "But where do you live?"
    A casual twist of his head took in the whole Sierra Negras. "Up there," he said.
    "In those fierce mountains? All by yourself?"
    "I'm partners with an old gent."
    "And you're going back now?"
    "Might as well. Got to be there tomorrow anyhow."
    "Seems such a lonely life for a —younger man. I mean, sort of wasteful."
    "You're telling me it's wasteful," Buchanan agreed with warmth. "All work and no profit."
    "I meant, well, physically ..."
    "Yeah, there's wear and tear."
    "I'm talking about the years of a person's life," the girl said impatiently. "A man wasn't intended to spend them alone."
    "No," Buchanan said, suddenly thoughtful. "I guess not."
    "And there's