could see the troubled shine of her eyes.

"Why are you afraid?" he said, as he fell into place beside her.
"We're friends now."

She made no answer, her head bent till her face was hidden by her hat.
He laid his hand on her rein and brought the animal to a halt.

"Let the wagon get on ahead," he whispered. "We'll follow at a
distance."

The whisper, so low that the silence was unbroken by it, came to her, a
clear sound carrying with it a thrill of understanding. She trembled
and--his arm against hers as his hand held her rein--he felt the
subdued vibration like the quivering of a frightened animal. The wagon
lumbered away with the sifting dust gushing from the wheels. A stirred
cloud rose upon its wake and they could feel it thick and stifling in
their nostrils. She watched the receding arch cut down the back by the
crack in the closed canvas, while he watched her. The sound of crushed
twigs and straining wheels lessened, the stillness gathered between
these noises of laboring life and the two mounted figures. As it
settled each could hear the other's breathing and feel a mutual throb,
as though the same leaping artery fed them both. In the blue night
encircled by the waste, they were as still as vessels balanced to a
hair in which passion brimmed to the edge.

"Come on," she said huskily, and twitched her reins from his hold.

The horses started, walking slowly. A strip of mangled sage lay in
front, back of them the heavens hung, a star-strewn curtain. It seemed
to the man and woman that they were the only living things in the
world, its people, its sounds, its interests, were in some undescried
distance where life progressed with languid pulses. How long the
silence lasted neither knew. He broke it with a whisper:

"Why did you get David the water last night?"

Her answer came so low he had to bend to hear it.

"He wanted it. I had to."

"Why do you give him all he asks for? David is nothing to you."

This time no answer came, and he stretched his hand and clasped the
pommel of her saddle. The horses, feeling the pull of the powerful
arm, drew together. His knee pressed on the shoulder of her pony, and
feeling him almost against her she bent sideways, flinching from the
contact.

"Why do you shrink from me, Missy?"

"I'm afraid," she whispered.

They paced on for a moment in silence. When he tried to speak his lips
were stiff, and he moistened them to murmur:

"Of what?"

She s