voice arrested him.

"It's the housekeeper's place to have the buckets ready," was what she
said.

"What do you mean by that?" he asked.

"I'll show you when you come back. You'll hurry, won't you?"

"Sure thing," he answered. And went about his task.

Now Jim Kendric knew as well as any man that there is no bed to compare
with the bed a man may make for himself in the forestlands. But here
was no forest, no thicket of young firs aromatic and springy, nothing
but the harsher vegetation of a hard land where agaves, the _maguey_ of
Mexico, and their kin thrive, where the cactus is the characteristic
growth. He'd be in luck to find some small pines or even the
dry-looking sparse cedars of the locality. These with handfuls of dry
leaves and grass, perhaps some tenderer shoots from the hillside sage,
with Zoraida's cloak spread over them, might make for Betty a couch on
which she could manage to sleep. It was too dark for picking and
choosing and his range was limited to what scant growth found root on
these uplands close by.

When he returned with the first armful of branches he informed Betty
cheerily that outside her fire was hidden as though a sturdy oak panel
shut their door for them. Betty was bending busily over her cloak and
still thus occupied when he brought in the second and third trailing
armful of boughs. He stood with his hands on his hips, looking down at
her curiously. And as at last Betty glanced up brightly there was an
air of triumph about her.

"The bucket is ready for the water," she said.

He came closer and she held out something toward him, and again he
adjusted his views to fit the companion whom he was growing to know.
She had spoiled a very beautiful and expensive cloak, but of it she had
improvised something intended to hold water. Not for very long,
perhaps; but long enough for the journey here from the creek, if a man
did not loiter on the way. With the ancient sacrificial knife she had
hacked at a stringy, fibrous bit of vegetation growing near the mouth
of their den; she had managed a tough loop some eight or ten inches in
diameter. Then she had ripped a square of silk from the cloak which
she had shaped cunningly like a deep pocket, binding it securely into
the fiber rim by thrusting holes through the silk and running bits of
the green fiber through like pack thread. The final result looked
something less like a bucket than some strange oriole's hanging nest.

"It _wi