n half-diffident correction of the statement.

"We'll meet again!" came the more definite and articulate defiance.

"Perhaps. Who can tell? Arizona, though a large place, has so few people
that it is humanly very small."

Now the other man rose in his stirrups, resting the weight of his body on
the palm of the hand which was on the back of his saddle. He was rigid,
his voice was shaking with very genuine though dramatic rage drawn to a
fine point of determination.

"When we do meet, you better draw! I give you warning!" he called.

There was no sign that this threat had made the easy traveller tighten a
single muscle. But a trace of scepticism had crept into his smile.

"Whew!" He drew the exclamation out into a whistle.

"Whistle--whistle while you can! You won't have many more chances! Draw,
you tenderfoot! But it won't do any good--I'll get you!"

With this challenge the other settled back into the saddle and proceeded
on his way.

"Whew!" The second whistle was anything but truculent and anything but
apologetic. It had the unconscious and spontaneous quality of the delight
of the collector who finds a new specimen in wild places.

From under her lashes the girl had been watching the easy traveller
rather than her persecutor; first, studiously; then, in the confusion of
embarrassment that left her speechless.

"Well, well," he concluded, "you must take not only your zoology, but
your anthropology as you find it!"

His drollness, his dry contemplation of the specimen, and his
absurdly gay and unpractical attire, formed a combination of elements
suddenly grouped into an effect that touched her reflex nerves after
the strain with the magic of humor. She could not help herself: she
burst out laughing. At this, he looked away from the specimen; looked
around puzzled, quizzically, and, in sympathetic impulse, began
laughing himself. Thus a wholly unmodern incident took a whimsical
turn out of a horror which, if farcical in the abstract, was no less
potent in the concrete.

"Quite like the Middle Ages, isn't it?" he said.

"But Walter Scott ceased writing in the thirties!" she returned, quick to
fall in with his cue.

"The swooning age outlasted him--lasted, indeed, into the era of
hoop-skirts; but that, too, is gone."

"They do give medals," she added.

"For rescuing the drowning only; and they are a great nuisance to carry
around in one's baggage. Please don't recommend me!"

Both laughed again softl