ache. He wanted her. Soul and body reached
out to her, though both found expression only in that first cry.

Her mouth quivered. "Oh, Bob, you silly boy! As if--as if it matters why
you were stunned. You were. That's enough. I'm so glad--so glad you're
not hurt. It's 'most a miracle. He might have killed you."

She did not tell him that he would have done it if she had not flung her
weight on his arm and dragged the weapon down, nor how in that dreadful
moment her wits had worked to save him from the homicidal mania of the
killer.

Bob's heart thumped against his ribs like a caged bird. Her dear concern
was for him. It was so she construed friendship--to give herself
generously without any mock modesty or prudery. She had come without
thought of herself because her heart had sent her.

"What matters is that when I called you came," she went on. "You weren't
afraid then, were you?"

"Hadn't time. That's why. I just jumped."

"Yes." The expression in her soft eyes was veiled, like autumn fires in
the hills blazing through mists. "You just jumped to help me. You forgot
he carried two forty-fives and would use them, didn't you?"

"Yes," he admitted. "I reckon if I'd thought of that--"

Even as the laughter rippled from her throat she gave a gesture of
impatience. There were times when self-depreciation ceased to be a
virtue. She remembered a confidence Blister had once made to her.

"T-Texas man," she squeaked, stuttering a little in mimicry, "throw up
that red haid an' stick out yore chin."

Up jerked the head. Bob began to grin in spite of himself.

"Whose image are you m-made in?" she demanded.

"You know," he answered.

"What have you got over all the world?"

"Dominion, ma'am, but not over all of it, I reckon."

"All of it," she insisted, standing clean of line and straight as a boy
soldier.

"Right smart of it," he compromised.

"Every teeny bit of it," she flung back.

"Have yore own way. I know you will anyhow," he conceded.

"An' what are you a little lower than?"

"I'm a heap lower than one angel I know."

She stamped her foot. "You're no such thing. You're as good as any
one--and better."

"I wouldn't say better," he murmured ironically. None the less he was
feeling quite cheerful again. He enjoyed being put through his catechism
by her.

"Trouble with you is you're so meek," she stormed. "You let anybody run
it over you till they go too far. What's the use of crying your own goods
d