ng I say stand for," Sefton said coolly.
"Remember that, Lemarc. Besides, Ygerne's all right. She can take
care of herself, my boy. Come on."

Grumbling, Lemarc allowed himself to be led away. Drennen passed on
and to his dugout. He found his bunk in the darkness and sat down upon
the edge of it, resting, breathing heavily, his weakness grown already
into giddy nausea. Finally, feeling the blood hot against his flesh
and knowing that he must get it stopped, he struck a match and lighted
a candle. With fingers shaking a little he tore his shirt away at the
side and found the hurt. A little, contemptuous grunt escaped him as
he made out just how bad it was. The bullet had merely ripped along
his side, inflicting a shallow surface wound, coming the nearest thing
in the world to missing him altogether. Had he not been pitifully
nerveless from another wound not ten days old and his strength
exhausted from his first active day since it had been given to him, he
could have laughed at this and at the girl who had fired it. He
stopped the bleeding as best he might, drew a rude bandage about his
body, and sank back on his bunk dizzy and sick.

"And now," he muttered disgustedly, "because I have been a damned fool
over a pretty cat with a red mouth and poisonous claws I've got another
week of hell before I can go out on the trail again."

The knowledge that he was a fool was no new knowledge to Drennen. He
sneered at himself for staking his life against a chance woman's lips,
and, snarling, put out his candle. He drew the tumbled covers of his
bed about him, of neither strength nor will to undress or to go and
close the door he had left open. He wanted to sleep; to wipe out the
memory of this day's folly as he sought to lose the memory of all other
days. He wanted his strength back because of the mere animal instinct
of life, not because life was a pretty thing.

But he did not sleep. His was that state of weakness and exhaustion of
a battered body which fends off immediate, utter restfulness. He had
shut the gates of his mind to the girl, Ygerne. But it was as though
his hands, holding the gates shut, were powerless, and her hands,
dragging at them that she might enter, were strong. With weariness and
faintness came a light fever.

Through his fever the girl passed and repassed all night. He saw her
as she had stood yonder on the mountain side, at the foot of the
rainbow. He saw her as she had stepped ou