, I remember. My arm
was hurt."

She held it out, the blood making her conscious of her weakness.
Stewart's fingers felt so firm and sure. Swiftly he ripped the wet
sleeve. Her forearm had been cut or scratched. He washed off the blood.

"Why, Stewart, it's nothing. I was only a little nervous. I guess that's
the first time I ever saw my own blood."

He made no reply as he tore her handkerchief into strips and bound her
arm. His swift motions and his silence gave her a hint of how he might
meet a more serious emergency. She felt safe. And because of that
impression, when he lifted his head and she saw that he was pale and
shaking, she was surprised. He stood before her folding his scarf,
which was still wet, and from which he made no effort to remove the red
stains.

"Miss Hammond," he said, hoarsely, "it was a man's hands--a Greaser's
finger-nails--that cut your arm. I know who he was. I could have killed
him. But I mightn't have got your freedom. You understand? I didn't
dare."

Madeline gazed at Stewart, astounded more by his speech than his
excessive emotion.

"My dear boy!" she exclaimed. And then she paused. She could not find
words.

He was making an apology to her for not killing a man who had laid a
rough hand upon her person. He was ashamed and seemed to be in a torture
that she would not understand why he had not killed the man. There
seemed to be something of passionate scorn in him that he had not been
able to avenge her as well as free her.

"Stewart, I understand. You were being my kind of cowboy. I thank you."

But she did not understand so much as she implied. She had heard many
stories of this man's cool indifference to peril and death. He had
always seemed as hard as granite. Why should the sight of a little blood
upon her arm pale his cheek and shake his hand and thicken his voice?
What was there in his nature to make him implore her to see the only
reason he could not kill an outlaw? The answer to the first question
was that he loved her. It was beyond her to answer the second. But the
secret of it lay in the same strength from which his love sprang--an
intensity of feeling which seemed characteristic of these Western men of
simple, lonely, elemental lives. All at once over Madeline rushed a tide
of realization of how greatly it was possible for such a man as Stewart
to love her. The thought came to her in all its singular power. All her
Eastern lovers who had the graces that made them h