The Desert Valley

'Inside,' Howard told him sombrely. 'Changing things around and making them all over.'

Helen opened the door. Howard wondered how she had found the time to lay aside her hat, give a new effect to her hair and pin on those field flowers. Her cheeks were only delicately flushed, her eyes were filled with dancing lights.

'Back again, pops?' She appeared to see only her father, though Howard still had a foot on the step and Sanchia was fluttering close at his elbow. 'And no new gold mine to-day!' It was quite as though a gold mine were virtually an everyday occurrence. She patted his dusty shoulder.

'No,' said Longstreet lightly. 'No new mine to-day, my dear. But I'm right; I'm getting all the signs I want and expected. To-morrow or maybe the next day, we'll have it. I know right where it is. Take the trail by----'

'Papa,' said Helen hastily and a trifle impatiently, 'can't you ever learn, even after you have been bitten? If you do stumble on anything, I should think you would remember and not talk about it.'

'But, my dear,' he expostulated, 'we are among friends.'

'Are we?' Helen demanded coolly. 'We were among the same friends before.'

Longstreet looked frankly displeased, vaguely distressed. Sanchia was listening eagerly, her eyes stony in their covetousness. Howard, staring only at Helen, had hardly heard.

'Well, well,' said Longstreet. 'I haven't found anything, so that's all there is to to-day's tale, anyway.' He got his first view of the cabin's interior. 'What in the world has happened in there?' he demanded, in amazement.

'Nothing,' answered Helen. 'I'm just packing; that's all.'

'Packing, my dear? Packing what? And, pray, with what intention?'

'Packing everything, of course. And with the intention of travelling.'

Longstreet looked perplexed. He turned to both Howard and Sanchia as though he suspected that they must share the secret.

'If you'll come in, pops,' Helen informed him, 'we'll arrange for everything. I wanted to get the worst of it done before you came, as you're so frightfully upsetting when there's anything like this to be done. Mr. Howard and Mrs. Murray,' she added, explaining sweetly, 'just ran in for a minute's call. They are both in a hurry, and we had better not detain them.'

Howard flushed. But his jaw muscles only bulged, and he did not withdraw his foot from the doorstep. Sanchia bestowed upon the girl a long searching look; it may have suggested itself to Sanchia's open mind at that instant that Helen was likely to prove a more troublesome factor than she had counted on.