arms; collapsed again, and yet once more pulled himself to
his feet by the sheer strength of the dogged will in him.

So, at last, like a drunken man, he reeled into safety, the very hair
and clothes of the man on fire from the inferno he had just left.

A score of eager hands were ready to relieve him of his burden, to
support his lurching footsteps. Two of them were the strong brown hands
of the woman he loved more than any other on earth, the woman who had
galloped into sight just in time to see him come staggering from that
furnace with the body of the man who was his hated rival. It was her
soft hands that smothered the fire in his hair, that dragged the burning
coat from his back.

He smiled wanly, murmured "Valencia," and fainted in her arms.

Gordon clutched in his stiffened fingers a tin box blistered by the
heat.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE TIN BOX

Dick Gordon lay on a bed in a sunny south room at the Corbett place.

He was swathed in bandages, and had something the appearance of a relic
of the Fourth of July, as our comic weeklies depict Young America the
day after that glorious occasion. But, except for one thing which he had
on his mind, the Coloradoan was as imperturbably gay as ever.

He had really been a good deal less injured than his rescuer; for,
though a falling rafter had struck him down as he turned to leave the
hut, this very accident had given him the benefit of such air as there
had been in the cabin. Here and there he had been slightly burned, but
he had not been forced to inhale smoke.

Wound in leg and all, the doctor had considered him out of danger long
before he felt sure of Don Manuel.

The young Spaniard lay several days with his life despaired of. The most
unremitting nursing on the part of his cousin alone pulled him through.

She would not give up; would not let his life slip away. And, in the
end, she had won her hard fight. Don Manuel, too, was on the road to
recovery.

While her cousin had been at the worst, Valencia Valdes saw the wounded
Coloradoan only for a minute of two each day; but, with Pesquiera's
recovery, she began to divide her time more equitably.

"I've been wishing I was the bad case," Dick told her whimsically when
she came in to see him. "I'll bet I have a relapse so the head nurse
won't always be in the other sick room."

"Manuel is my cousin, and he has been very, very ill," she answered in
her low, sweet voice, the color in her olive cheeks r