Drummond's nose
and mouth were badly damaged. Both eyes were mere slits, blazing
between coloring puffs. One crushing, blow straight into his face as
he came up defiantly sent him reeling about, head down, groping blindly.

"One more in the same place, Wild Cat!" called Gulick.

But Hiram desisted, though continuing to trail the groping man as he
reeled through the sand, stumbling frequently.

"Lock the door, Hiram!" begged Heine Schultz. "It's all over but
closin' up."

Hiram shook his head, and then Drummond wilted and sank in the sand.

Water was quickly provided, and the pulse of Jerkline Jo leaped as she
saw that Hiram himself was taking the most prominent part in the
whipped man's revival. It was fully five minutes before Drummond was
conscious again; then Hiram helped to bear him to one of the trucks.

"Thank you, Hiram," Jo said softly as he returned.

He looked up into her eyes, which were moist round the rims. He had
fought and won for his girl of romance, and he knew now that it had
been she who through all the years had been beckoning him to come.

With a damp cloth she tenderly touched his bruised face here and there
as the wagon train moved on again.

"Don't think any the worse of me, Hiram," she pleaded. "Perhaps I'm a
roughneck, after all, as Drummond intimated. But I can't faint and
carry on at the sight of blood and the sound of battering fists as most
women do. I like a fight--a fair fight--a good fight--a manly fight.
Life for me has been always a fight. I've learned not to shrink. Am I
brutal--for a woman?"

"No," said Hiram. "I think I want you that way. Nobody could look
into your eyes, Jo, and think you weren't tender and compassionate.
I'd want my woman to be a fighter, I guess, when it was the time and
place to fight."

Jerkline Jo's face was radiant with color, but she said softly:

"And I want my man to be a fighter. It's in my blood, it seems."

They said nothing more about it then, but each knew that love had
spoken, and the unfriendly desert seemed a delectable land.

In camp that night Blink Keddie made a confession.

"Jo," he said, twisting and squirming, "me and Heine and Jim and Tom
did ease that boulder into the road. We done it to get even for the
empty water tank."

"Why, Blink!" Jo cried, aghast.

"We made it up to do it, and not even let Wild Cat in on the deal,
'cause he seemed to think like you did. So we rampsed our teams and
got way ahead o