t go of me."

"You liar," he whispered. "You love me."

She could not answer, her knees shaking, the place blurring on her
sight. Through a sick dizziness she saw nothing but his altered face.
He reached for the other hand, spread flat against the stone, and as
she felt his grasp upon it, her words came in broken pleading:

"Yes, yes, it's true. I do. But I've promised. Let me go."

"Then come to me," he said huskily and tried to wrench her forward into
his arms.

She held herself rigid, braced against the wall, and tearing one hand
free, raised it, palm out, between his face and hers.

"No, no! My father--I promised him. I can't tell David now. I will
later. Don't hold me. Let me go."

The voice of Daddy John came clear from outside. "Missy! Hullo,
Missy! Where are you?"

She sent up the old man's name in a quavering cry and the mountain man
dropped her arm and stepped back.

She ran past him, and at the mouth of the opening, stopped and leaned
on a ledge, getting her breath and trying to control her trembling.
Daddy John was coming through the sage, a jack rabbit held up in one
hand.

"Here's your supper," he cried jubilant. "Ain't I told you I'd get it?"

She moved forward to meet him, walking slowly. When he saw her face,
concern supplanted his triumph.

"We got to get you out of this," he said. "You're as peaked as one of
them frontier women in sunbonnets," and he tried to hook a
compassionate hand in her arm. But she edged away from him, fearful
that he would feel her trembling, and answered:

"It's the heat. It seems to draw the strength all out of me."

"The rabbit'll put some of it back. I'll go and get things started.
You sit by David and rest up," and he skurried away to the camp.

She went to David, lying now with opened eyes and hands clasped beneath
his head. When her shadow fell across him he turned a brightened face
on her.

"I'm better," he said. "If I could get some water I think I'd soon be
all right."

She stood looking down on him with a clouded, almost sullen, expression.

"Did you sleep long?" she asked for something to say.

"I don't know how long. A little while ago I woke up and looked for
you, but you weren't anywhere round, so I just lay here and looked out
across to the mountains and began to think of California. I haven't
thought about it for a long while."

She sat down by him and listened as he told her his thoughts. With a
renewal of stre