der her tumbled hair and hanging hat.

"You don't suppose I was trespassing on your wretched patch again, do
you?" she said in a voice she was trying to keep from breaking. "It was
that brute--who bolted."

"I don't suppose you were bullying ME this time," he said, "but you were
YOUR HORSE--or it wouldn't have happened. Are you hurt?"

She tried to move; he offered her his hand, but she shied from it and
struggled to her feet. She took a step forward--but limped.

"If you don't want my arm, let me call a Chinaman," he suggested.

She glared at him. "If you do I'll scream!" she said in a low voice, and
he knew she would. But at the same moment her face whitened, at which he
slipped his arm under hers in a dexterous, business-like way, so as to
support her weight. Then her hat got askew, and down came a long braid
over his shoulder. He remembered it of old, only it was darker than then
and two or three feet longer.

"If you could manage to limp as far as the gate and sit down on the
bank, I'd get your horse for you," he said. "I hitched it to a sapling."

"I saw you did--before you even offered to help me," she said
scornfully.

"The horse would have got away--YOU couldn't."

"If you only knew how I hated you," she said, with a white face, but a
trembling lip.

"I don't see how that would make things any better," he said. "Better
wipe your face; it's scratched and muddy, and you've been rubbing your
nose in my strawberry bed."

She snatched his proffered handkerchief suddenly, applied it to her
face, and said: "I suppose it looks dreadful."

"Like a pig's," he returned cheerfully.

She walked a little more firmly after this, until they reached the gate.
He seated her on the bank, and went back for the mustang. That beautiful
brute, astounded and sore from its contact with the top rail and
brambles, was cowed and subdued as he led it back.

She had finished wiping her face, and was hurriedly disentangling
two stinging tears from her long lashes, before she threw back his
handkerchief. Her sprained ankle obliged him to lift her into the saddle
and adjust her little shoe in the stirrup. He remembered when it
was still smaller. "You used to ride astride," he said, a flood of
recollection coming over him, "and it's much safer with your temper and
that brute."

"And you," she said in a lower voice, "used to be"--But the rest of her
sentence was lost in the switch of the whip and the jump of her horse,
but he