wound. Her cold water had stopped the bleeding. Then she poured
her brandy in the steaming cup, and, made rough by her desperate
helplessness, forced some between his lips and teeth.

Instantly, almost, she felt the tremble of life creeping back, and
as his deep eyes opened upon her she sat still and mute. But the gaze
seemed luminous with an unnoting calm, and she wondered if perhaps he
could not recognize her; she watched this internal clearness of his
vision, scarcely daring to breathe, until presently he began to speak,
with the same profound and clear impersonality sounding in his slowly
uttered words.

"I thought they had found me. I expected they were going to kill me."
He stopped, and she gave him more of the hot drink, which he took, still
lying and looking at her as if the present did not reach his senses. "I
knew hands were touching me. I reckon I was not dead. I knew about them
soon as they began, only I could not interfere." He waited again. "It is
mighty strange where I have been. No. Mighty natural." Then he went back
into his revery, and lay with his eyes still full open upon her where
she sat motionless.

She began to feel a greater awe in this living presence than when it
had been his body with an ice-cold hand; and she quietly spoke his name,
venturing scarcely more than a whisper.

At this, some nearer thing wakened in his look. "But it was you all
along," he resumed. "It is you now. You must not stay--" Weakness
overcame him, and his eyes closed. She sat ministering to him, and when
he roused again, he began anxiously at once: "You must not stay. They
would get you, too."

She glanced at him with a sort of fierceness, then reached for his
pistol, in which was nothing but blackened empty cartridges. She threw
these out and drew six from his belt, loaded the weapon, and snapped
shut its hinge.

"Please take it," he said, more anxious and more himself. "I ain't worth
tryin' to keep. Look at me!"

"Are you giving up?" she inquired, trying to put scorn in her tone. Then
she seated herself.

"Where is the sense in both of us--"

"You had better save your strength," she interrupted.

He tried to sit up.

"Lie down!" she ordered.

He sank obediently, and began to smile.

When she saw that, she smiled too, and unexpectedly took his hand.
"Listen, friend," said she. "Nobody shall get you, and nobody shall get
me. Now take some more brandy."

"It must be noon," said the cow-puncher, when sh