fe in
his hands and ridden to save her without a second thought. He had fought
a good fight, one that would be a story worth telling when she had become
an old woman with grandchildren at her knee.

"Does your foot hurt you much?" she asked gently.

"It sort o' keeps my memory jogged up. It's a kind of forget-me-not
souvenir, for a good boy, compliments of a Mescalero buck, name unknown,
probably now permanently retired from his business of raisin' Cain. But
it might be a heap worse. They would've been glad to collect our scalps
if it hadn't been onconvenient, I expect."

"Yes," she agreed gravely.

He sat up abruptly. "Say, what about Billie? I left him wounded outside.
Did yore folks find him?"

"Yes. It seems the Apaches trapped them in the stable. They roped horses
and came straight for the canon. They found Mr. Prince, but they had
no time to stop then. Father is looking after him now. He said he was
going to take him to the house in the buckboard."

"Is he badly hurt?"

"Jean thinks he will be all right. Mr. Prince told him it was only a
flesh wound, but the muscles were so paralysed he couldn't get around."

"The bullet did not strike an artery, then?"

"My brother seemed to think not."

"I reckon there's no doctor near."

Her eyes twinkled. "Not very near. Our nearest neighbor lives on the
Pecos one hundred land seventeen miles away. But my father is as good as
a doctor any day of the week."

"Likely you don't borrow coffee next door when you run out of it
onexpected. But don't you get lonesome?"

"Haven't time," she told him cheerfully. "Besides, somebody going through
stops off every three or four months. Then we learn all the news."

Jimmie glanced at her shyly and looked quickly away. This girl was not
like any woman he had known. Most of them were drab creatures with the
spirit washed out of them. His sister had been an exception. She had had
plenty of vitality, good looks and pride, but the somber shadow of her
environment had not made for gayety. It was different with Pauline
Roubideau. Though she had just escaped from terrible danger, laughter
bubbled up in her soft throat, mirth rippled over her mobile little face.
She expressed herself with swift, impulsive gestures at times. Then again
she suggested an inheritance of slow grace from the Southland of her
mother.

He did not understand the contradictions of her and they worried him a
little. Billie had told him that she could rope and