"I don't like to sleep out.Isn't there a ranchhouse near?""Y'u wouldn't call it near by the time we had reached it.What's to hinder your sleeping here? Isn't this room airy enough? And don't y'u like the system of lighting? 'Twas patented I forget how many million years ago.Y'u ain't going to play parlor girl now after getting the reputation y'u've got for gameness, are y'u?"But he knew well enough that it was no silly schoolgirl fear she had, but some deep instinct in her that distrusted him and warned her to beware.So, lightly he took up the burden of the talk while he gathered cottonwood branches for the fire.
"Now if I'd only thought to bring a load of lumber and some carpenters--and a chaperon," he chided himself in burlesque, his bold eyes closely on the girl's face to gloat on the color that flew to her cheeks at his suggestion.
She hastened to disclaim lightly the feeling he had unmasked in her."It is a pity, but it can't be helped now.I suppose I am cross and don't seem very grateful.I'm tired out and nervous, but I am sure that I'll enjoy sleeping out.If I don't I shall not be so ungenerous as to blame you."He soon had a cup of steaming coffee ready for her, and the heat of it made a new woman of her.She sat in the warm fire glow, and began to feel stealing over her a delightful reaction of languor.She told herselfseverely it was ridiculous to have been so foolishly prim about the inevitable.
"Since you know my name, isn't it fair that I should know yours?" she smilingly asked, more amiably than she had yet spoken to him.
"Well, since I have found the lamb that was lost, y'u may call me a shepherd of the desert.""Then, Mr.Shepherd, I'm very glad to meet you.I don't remember when I ever was more glad to meet a stranger." And she added with a little laugh: "It's a pity I'm too sleepy to do my duty by you in a social way.""We'll let that wait till to-morrow.Y'u'll entertain me plenty then.I'll make your bunk up right away."She was presently lying with her feet to the fire, snugly rolled in his saddle blankets.But though her eyes were heavy, her brain was still too active to permit her to sleep immediately.The excitement of her adventure was too near, the emotions of the day too poignantly vivid, to lose their hold on her at once.For the first time in her life she lay lapped in the illimitable velvet night, countless unwinking stars lighting the blue-black dream in which she floated.The enchantment of the night's loveliness swept through her sensitive pulses and thrilled her with the mystery of the great life of which she was an atom.Awe held her a willing captive.
She thought of many things, of her past life and its incongruity with the present, of the man who lay wounded at the Lazy D, of this other wide-shouldered vagabond who was just now in the shadows beyond the firelight, pacing up and down with long, light even strides as he looked to his horse and fed the fire.She watched him make an end of the things he found to do and then take his place opposite her.Who and what was he, this fascinating scamp who one moment flooded the moonlit desert with inspired snatches from the opera sung in the voice of an angel, and the next lashed at his horse like a devil incarnate? How reconcile the outstanding inconsistencies in him? For his every inflection, every motion, proclaimed the strain of good blood gone wrong and trampled under foot of set, sardonic purpose, indicated him a man of culture in a hell of his own choosing.Lounging on his elbow in the flickering shadows, so carelessly insouciant in every picturesque inch of him, he seemed toradiate the melodrama of the untamed frontier, just as her guest of tarnished reputation now at the ranch seemed to breathe forth its romance.
"Sleep well, little partner.Don't be afraid; nothing can harm you," this man had told her.
