ere was a certain expectancy in his eye as he neared the
close of these labors; but if there were it passed unnoted. The girl
bathed the injured head with her handkerchief, and brushed back his hair
with a dainty caressing motion that thrilled him until the color rose
beneath the tan. There was a glint of gray in the wavy black hair, she
noted.

She stepped back to regard her handiwork. "Now you look better!" she
said approvingly. Then, slightly flurried, not without a memory of a
previous and not dissimilar remark of hers, she was off up the hill:
whence, despite his shocked protest, she brought back the lost gun and
hat.

Her eyes were sparkling when she returned, her face glowing. Ignoring
his reproachful gaze, she wrung out her handkerchief, led the
patient firmly down the hill and to his saddle, made him trim off a
saddle-string, and bound the handkerchief to the wound. She fitted
the sombrero gently.

"There! Don't this head feel better now?" she queried gayly, with fine
disregard for grammar. "And now what? Won't you come back to camp with
me? Mr. Lake will be glad to put you up or to let you have a horse. Do
you live far away? I do hope you are not one of those Rosebud men. Mr.
La----" She bit her speech off midword.

"No men there except this Mr. Lake?" asked the cowboy idly.

"Oh, yes; there's Mr. Herbert--he's gone riding with Lettie--and Mr.
White; but it was Mr. Lake who got up the camping party. Mother and Aunt
Lot, and a crowd of us girls--La Luz girls, you know. Mother and I are
visiting Mr. Lake's sister. He's going to give us a masquerade ball when
we get back, next week."

The cowboy looked down his nose for consultation, and his nose gave a
meditative little tweak.

"What Lake is it? There's some several Lakes round here. Is it Lake of
Aqua Chiquite--wears his hair decollete; talks like he had a washboard
in his throat; tailor-made face; walks like a duck on stilts; general
sort of pouter-pigeon effect?"

At this envenomed description, Miss Ellinor Hoffman promptly choked.

"I don't know anything about your Aqua Chiquite. I never heard of the
place before. He is a banker in Arcadia. He keeps a general store there.
You must know him, surely." So far her voice was rather stern and
purposely resentful, as became Mr. Lake's guest; but there were
complications, rankling memories of Mr. Lake--of unwelcome attentions
persistently forced upon her. She spoiled the rebuke by adding tartly,
"But I t