He stopped, listening. It
came again, a dry, parched call for help that had no hope in it.
He wheeled his pony as on a half dollar, and two minutes later
caught sight of an exhausted figure leaning against a cottonwood.
He needed no second guess to surmise that she was lost and had
been wandering over the sandy desert through the hot day. With a
shout, he loped toward her, and had his water bottle at her lips
before she had recovered from her glad surprise at sight of him.
"You'll feel better now," he soothed. "How long you been lost,
ma'am?"
"Since ten this morning. I came with my aunt to gather poppies,
and somehow I got separated from her and the rig. These hills
look so alike. I must have got turned round and mistaken one for
another."
"You have to be awful careful here. Some one ought to have told
you," he said indignantly.
"Oh, they told me, but of course I knew best," she replied, with
quick scorn of her own self-sufficiency.
"Well, it's all right now," the cowpuncher told her cheerfully.
He would not for a thousand dollars have told her how near it had
come to being all wrong, how her life had probably depended upon
that faint wafted call of hers.
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