"Help me down," she said.
"But--are you well enough?" he protested. "Wait--a little
longer."
"I'm weak--dizzy. But I want to get down."
He lifted her--what a light burden now!--and stood her upright
beside him, and supported her as she essayed to walk with halting
steps. She was like a stripling of a boy; the bright, small head
scarcely reached his shoulder. But now, as she clung to his arm,
the rider's costume she wore did not contradict, as it had done
at first, his feeling of her femininity. She might be the famous
Masked Rider of the uplands, she might resemble a boy; but her
outline, her little hands and feet, her hair, her big eyes and
tremulous lips, and especially a something that Venters felt as a
subtle essence rather than what he saw, proclaimed her sex.
She soon tired. He arranged a comfortable seat for her under the
spruce that overspread the camp-fire.
"Now tell me--everything," she said.
He recounted all that had happened from the time of his discovery
of the rustlers in the canyon up to the present moment.
"You shot me--and now you've saved my life?"
"Yes. After almost killing you I've pulled you through."
"Are you glad?"
"I should say so!"
Her eyes were unusually expressive, and they regarded him
steadily; she was unconscious of that mirroring of her emotions
and they shone with gratefulness and interest and wonder and
sadness.
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