something else, a deepening stain that soaked slowly down his
shirt sleeve.

"You are wounded."

"Am I?"

"Aren't you?"

"Come to think of it, I believe I am," he laughed shortly.

"Badly?"

"I haven't got the doctor's report yet." There was a gleam of whimsical
gayety in his eyes as he added: "I was going to find him when I had the
good luck to meet up with you."

He was a hunted miscreant, wounded, riding for his life as a hurt wolf
dodges to shake off the pursuit, but strangely enough her gallant heart
thrilled to the indomitable pluck of him. Never had she seen a man who
looked more the vagabond enthroned. His crisp bronze curls and his
superb shoulders were bathed in the sunpour. Not once, since his eyes
had fallen on her, had he looked back to see if his hunters had picked
up the lost trail. He was as much at ease as if his whole thought at
meeting her were the pleasure of the encounter.

"Can you ride?" she demanded.

"I can stick on a hawss if it's plumb gentle. Leastways I've been trying
to for twenty years," he drawled.

Her impatient gesture waved his flippancy aside. "I mean, are you too
much hurt to ride? I'm not going to leave you here like a wounded
coyote. Can you follow me if I lead the way?"

"Yes, ma'am."

She turned. He followed her obediently, but with a ghost of a smile
still flickering on his face.

"Am I your prisoner, Miss Sanderson?" he presently wanted to know.

"I'm not thinking of prisoners just now," she answered shortly, with an
anxious backward glance.

Presently she pulled up and wheeled her horse, so that when he halted
they sat facing each other.

"Let me see your arm," she ordered.

Obediently he held out to her the one that happened to be nearest. It
was the unwounded one. An angry spark gleamed in her eye.

"This is no time to be fresh. Give me the other."

"Yes, ma'am." he answered, with deceptive meekness.

Without comment, she turned back the sleeve which came to the wrist
gauntlet, and discovered a furrow ridged by a rifle bullet. It was a
clean flesh wound, neither deep nor long enough to cause him trouble
except for the immediate loss of blood. To her inexperience it looked
pretty bad.

"A plumb scratch," he explained.

She took the kerchief from her neck, and tied it about the hurt, then
pulled down the sleeve and buttoned it over the brown forearm. All this
she did quite impersonally, her face free of the least sympathy.

"Thank you, ma'am. Yo