er esteem.

"Would you--would you like to kiss me?" she asked simply.

He felt a clamor of the blood and subdued it before he answered. It was
in accord with the charm she held for him that her frank generosity
enhanced his respect for her. If she gave a royal gift it was out of the
truth of her heart.

Without need of words she read acceptance in his eyes and leaned toward
him in the saddle. Their lips met.

"You're the first--except dad and Jean," she told him.

The feeling in his primitive heart he could not have analyzed. He did not
know that his soul was moved to some such consecration as that of a young
knight taking his vow of service, though he was aware that all the good
in him leaped to instant response in her presence, that by some strange
spiritual alchemy he had passed through a refining process.

"I'm comin' back to see you some day. Mebbe you'll feel different then,"
he said.

"I might," she admitted.

They rounded the bend. Clanton, on horseback, caught sight of them. He
waved his hat and cantered forward.

"Say, Billie, how much bacon do you reckon we need to take with us?"

In front of the house Pauline slipped from her horse and left them
discussing the commissary.

Chapter VII

On the Trail

The convalescents rode away into a desert green with spring. The fragrant
chaparral thickets were bursting into flower. Spanish bayonets studded
the plains. Everywhere about them was the promise of a new life not yet
burnt by hot summer suns to a crisp.

During the day they ran into a swamp country and crossed a bayou where
cypress knees and blue gums showed fantastic in the eerie gloom of the
stagnant water. From this they emerged to a more wooded region and made
an early camp on the edge of a grove of ash trees bordering a small
stream where pecans grew thick.

Shortly after daybreak they were jogging on at a walk-trot, the road gait
of the Southwest, into the treeless country of the prairie. They nooned
at an arroyo seco, and after they had eaten took a siesta during the heat
of the day. Night brought with it a thunderstorm and they took refuge in
a Mexican hut built of palisades and roofed with grass sod. A widow lived
alone in the jacal, but she made them welcome to the best she had. The
young men slept in a corner of the hut on a dry cowskin spread upon the
mud floor, their saddles for pillows and their blankets rolled about
them.

While she was cooking their breakfast, Prince n