The little man smiled with returning confidence and, lifting his glance, saw the cabin and the browsing flock cut off by the barbed-wire fence from the road. Then as he brought the car to a stop, the collie flew barking against the wicket, and a gaunt woman rose from a rock and stood shading her eyes from the morning sun.
He sprang down and spoke to the dog, and instantly his tone quieted the collie, but the woman came nearer to point at the sign. "You better read that," she threatened.
His hand dropped from the wicket, and he stood staring at her across the barbed wire. "I was looking for a lady," he said slowly, "but I guess likely I've made a mistake."
She came another step and, again shading her eyes, stared back. A look half eager, half wistful, trembled for a moment through the forbidding tenseness of her face. "All the men I've seen in automobiles up here were looking for land," she replied defiantly.
He nodded; his eyes did not move from her face, but they shone like two chippings of blue glacier ice, and his voice when he spoke piped its sharpest key. "So am I. I've got an option on a pocket somewheres in this range, and the lady I'm inquiring for happened to homestead the quarter below. It sort of overlaps, so's she put her improvements on the wrong edge. Yes, ma'am, I've likely made a mistake, but, you see, I heard she had a bunch o' goats."
There was a brief silence then. "Anyhow, you must o' come from that surveyor," she said. "Maybe he was just a smooth talker, but he had a nice face; laughing crinkles around his eyes and a way of looking at you, if you'd done a mean thing, to make you feel like the scum of the earth. But he happened to be acquainted with the man that made me a present of my first billy and ewes, and you--favor him a little." She paused, then went on unsteadily, while her eyes continued to search him. "He was about your size, but he's been up in Alaska, way in the interior somewheres for years, and the letter I wrote him couldn't have reached him inside a month. I figured if he came out, he would just about catch the last steamer in October."
"So he would, if he hadn't come down to Seattle already." He stopped, fumbling with the pin, and threw open the wicket. "I guess I ain't changed much more'n you, Annabel."