e
increased by ever so little.

"Buck," she repeated, then all in a rush and with a sob, "Oh, I'm
afraid."

Tenderly the man drew her to him. Her head fell against his shoulder
and she hid her eyes.

"There, little girl," he reassured her, his big voice rich and musical.
"There's nothing to get scairt of, I'll take care of you. What
frightens you, honey?"

She nestled close in his arm with a sigh of half relief.

"I don't know," she laughed, but still with a tremble in her tones.
"It's all so big and lonesome and strange--and I'm so little."

"There, little girl," he repeated.

They drove on and on. At the end of two hours they stopped. Men with
lanterns dazzled their eyes. The horses were changed, and so out again
into the night where the desert seemed to breathe in deep, mysterious
exhalations like a sleeping beast.

Senor Johnson drove his horses masterfully with his one free hand. The
road did not exist, except to his trained eyes. They seemed to be
swimming out, out, into a vapour of night with the wind of their going
steady against their faces.

"Buck," she murmured, "I'm so tired."

He tightened his arm around her and she went to sleep, half-waking at
the ranches where the relays waited, dozing again as soon as the
lanterns dropped behind. And Senor Johnson, alone with his horses and
the solemn stars, drove on, ever on, into the desert.

By grey of the early summer dawn they arrived. The girl wakened,
descended, smiling uncertainly at Susie O'Toole, blinking somnolently
at her surroundings. Susie put her to bed in the little southwest room
where hung the shiny Colt's forty-five in its worn leather
"Texas-style" holster. She murmured incoherent thanks and sank again
to sleep, overcome by the fatigue of unaccustomed travelling, by the
potency of the desert air, by the excitement of anticipation to which
her nerves had long been strung.

Senor Johnson did not sleep. He was tough, and used to it. He lit a
cigar and rambled about, now reading the newspapers he had brought with
him, now prowling softly about the building, now visiting the corrals
and outbuildings, once even the thousand-acre pasture where his
saddle-horse knew him and came to him to have its forehead rubbed. The
dawn broke in good earnest, throwing aside its gauzy draperies of
mauve. Sang, the Chinese cook, built his fire. Senor Johnson forbade
him to clang the rising bell, and himself roused the cow-punchers. The
girl