A moment later the girl was beside him, pity in her eyes.

“Let me see that cut on your head,” she said. She dropped on her knee and parted the hair with a gentle touch.

“Why, you’re real!” breathed the injured near-centaur, beaming with wonder and gratification.

She sat down limply and gave way to wild laughter.

“So are you!” she retorted. “Why, that is exactly what I was thinking! I thought maybe I was asleep and having an extraordinary dream. That wound on your head is not serious, if that’s all.” She brushed back a wisp of hair that blew across her eyes.

“I hurt this head just the other day,” observed the bedraggled victim, as one who has an assortment of heads from which to choose. He pulled off his soaked gloves and regarded them ruefully. “‘Them that go down to deep waters!’ That was a regular triumph of matter over mind, wasn’t it?”

“It’s a wonder you’re alive! My! How frightened I was! Aren’t you hurt—truly? Ribs or anything?”

The patient’s elbows made a convulsive movement to guard the threatened ribs.

“Oh, no, ma’am. I ain’t hurt a bit—indeed I ain’t,” he said truthfully; but his eyes had the languid droop of one who says the thing that is not. “Don’t you worry none about me—not one bit. Sorry I frightened you. That black horse now——” He stopped to consider fully the case of the black horse. “Well, you see, ma’am, that black horse, he ain’t exactly right plumb gentle.” His eyelids drooped again.

The girl considered. She believed him—both that he was not badly hurt and that the black horse was not exactly gentle. And her suspicions were aroused. His slow drawl was getting slower; his cowboyese broader—a mode of speech quite inconsistent with that first sprightly remark about the little eohippus. What manner of cowboy was this, from whose tongue a learned scientific term tripped spontaneously in so stressful a moment—who quoted scraps of the litany unaware? Also, her own eyes were none of the slowest. She had noted that the limping did not begin until he was clear of the pool. Still, that might happen if one were excited; but this one had been singularly calm, “more than usual ca’m,” she mentally quoted.... Of course, if he really were badly hurt—which she didn’t believe one bit—a little bruised and jarred, maybe—the only thing for her to do would be to go back to camp and get help.... That meant the renewal of Lake’s hateful attentions and—for the other girls, the sharing of her find.... She stole another look at her find and thrilled with all the pride of the discoverer.... No doubt he was shaken and bruised, after all. He must be suffering. What a splendid rider he was!

“What made you so absurd? Why didn’t you get out of the water, then, if you are not hurt?” she snapped suddenly.

The drooped lids raised; brown eyes looked steadily into brown eyes.

“I didn’t want to wake up,” he said.

The candor of this explanation threw her, for the moment, into a vivid and becoming confusion. The dusky roses leaped to her cheeks; the long, dark lashes quivered and fell. Then she rose to the occasion.

“And how about the little eohippus?” she demanded. “That doesn’t seem to go well with some of your other talk.”

“Oh!” He regarded her with pained but unflinching innocence. “The Latin, you mean? Why, ma’am, that’s most all the Latin I know—that and some more big words in that song. I learned that song off of Frank John, just like a poll-parrot.”

“Sing it! And eohippus isn’t Latin. It’s Greek.”

“Why, ma’am, I can’t, just now—I’m so muddy; but I’ll tell it to you. Maybe I’ll sing it to you some other time.” A sidelong glance accompanied this little suggestion. The girl’s face was blank and non-committal; so he resumed: “It goes like this:

“No; that wasn’t the first. It begins:

“Of course you know, ma’am—Frank John he told me about it—that horses were little like that, ’way back. And this one he set his silly head that he was going to be a really-truly horse, like the song says. And folks told him he couldn’t—couldn’t possibly be done, nohow. And sure enough he did. It’s a foolish song, really. I only sing parts of it when I feel like that—like it couldn’t be done and I was going to do it, you know. The boys call it my song. Look here, ma’am!” He fished in his vest pocket and produced tobacco and papers, matches—last of all, a tiny turquoise horse, an inch long. “I had a jeweler-man put five toes on his feet once to make him be a little eohippus. Going to make a watch-charm of him sometime. He’s a lucky little eohippus, I think. Peso gave him to me when—never mind when. Peso’s a Mescalero Indian, you know, chief of police at the agency.” He gingerly dropped the little horse into her eager palm.

It was a singularly grotesque and angular little beast, high-stepping, high-headed, with a level stare, at once complacent and haughty. Despite the first unprepossessing rigidity of outline, there was somehow a sprightly air, something endearing, in the stiff, purposed stride, the alert, inquiring ears, the stern and watchful eye. Each tiny hoof was faintly graven to semblance of five tinier toes; there, the work showed fresh.

“The cunning little monster!” Prison grime was on him; she groomed and polished at his dingy sides until the wonderful color shone out triumphant. “What is it that makes him such a dear? Oh, I know. It’s something—well, childlike, you know. Think of the grown-up child that toiled with pride and joy at the making of him—dear me, how many lifetimes since!—and fondly put him by as a complete horse.” She held him up in the sun: the ingrate met her caress with the same obdurate and indomitable glare. She laughed her rapturous delight: “There! How much better you look! Oh, you darling! Aren’t you absurd? Straight-backed, stiff-legged, thick-necked, square-headed—and that ridiculously baleful eye! It’s too high up and too far forward, you know—and your ears are too big—and you have such a malignant look! Never mind; now that you’re all nice and clean, I’m going to reward you.” Her lips just brushed him—the lucky little eohippus.

The owner of the lucky little horse was not able to repress one swift, dismal glance at his own vast dishevelment, nor, as his shrinking hands, entirely of their own volition, crept stealthily to hiding, the slightest upward rolling of a hopeful eye toward the leaping waters of the spring; but, if one might judge from her sedate and matter-of-fact tones, that eloquent glance was wasted on the girl.

“You ought to take better care of him, you know,” she said as she restored the little monster to his owner. Then she laughed. “Hasn’t he a fierce and warlike appearance, though?”

“Sure. That’s resolution. Look at those legs!” said the owner fondly. “He spurns the ground. He’s going somewheres. He’s going to be a horse! And them ears—one cocked forward and the other back, strictly on the cuidado! He’ll make it. He’ll certainly do to take along! Yes, ma’am, I’ll take right good care of him.” He regarded the homely beast with awe; he swathed him in cigarette papers with tenderest care. “I’ll leave him at home after this. He might get hurt. I might sometime want to give him to—somebody.”

The girl sprang up.

“Now I must get some water and wash that head,” she announced briskly.

“Oh, no—I can’t let you do that. I can walk. I ain’t hurt a bit, I keep telling you.” In proof of which he walked to the pool with a palpably clever assumption of steadiness. The girl fluttered solicitous at his elbow. Then she ran ahead, climbed up to the spring and extended a firm, cool hand, which he took shamelessly, and so came to the fairy waterfall.

Here he made himself presentable as to face and hands. It is just possible there 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 dÉcolletÉ; 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 think he is the man you mean!” and felt her wrongs avenged.

The cowboy’s face cleared.

“Well, I don’t use Arcadia much, you see. I mostly range down Rainbow River. Arcadia folks—why, they’re mostly newcomers, health-seekers and people just living on their incomes—not working folks much, except the railroaders and lumbermen. Now about getting home. You see, ma’am, some of the boys are riding down that way”—he jerked his thumb to indicate the last flight of the imperfectly gentle horse—“and they’re right apt to see my runaway eohippus and sure to see the rope-drag; so they’ll likely amble along the back track to see how much who’s hurt. So I guess I’d better stay here. They may be along most any time. Thank you kindly, just the same. Of course, if they don’t come at all——Is your camp far?”

“Not—not very,” said Ellinor. The mere fact was that Miss Ellinor had set out ostensibly for a sketching expedition with another girl, had turned aside to explore, and exploring had fetched a circuit that had left her much closer to her starting-place than to her goal. He misinterpreted the slight hesitation.

“Well, ma’am, thank you again; but I mustn’t be keeping you longer. I really ought to see you safe back to your camp; but—you’ll understand—under the circumstances—you’ll excuse me?”

He did not want to implicate Mr. Lake, so he took a limping step forward to justify his rudeness.

“And you hardly able to walk? Ridiculous! What I ought to do is to go back to camp and get some one—get Mr. White to help you.” Thus, at once accepting his unspoken explanation, and offering her own apology in turn, she threw aside the air of guarded hostility that had marked the last minutes and threw herself anew into this joyous adventure. “When—or if—your friends find you, won’t it hurt you to ride?” she asked, and smiled deliberate encouragement.

“I can be as modest as anybody when there’s anything to be modest about; but in this case I guess I’ll now declare that I can ride anything that a saddle will stay on.... I reckon,” he added reflectively, “the boys’ll have right smart to say about me being throwed.”

“But you weren’t thrown! You rode magnificently!” Her eyes flashed admiration.

“Yes’m. That’s what I hoped you’d say,” said the admired one complacently. “Go on, ma’am. Say it again.”

“It was splendid! The saddle turned—that’s all!”

He slowly surveyed the scene of his late exploit.

“Ye—es, that was some riding—for a while,” he admitted. “But you see, that saddle now, scarred up that way—why, they’ll think the eohippus wasted me and then dragged the saddle off under a tree. Leastways, they’ll say they think so, frequent. Best not to let on and to make no excuses. It’ll be easier that way. We’re great on guying here. That’s most all the fun we have. We sure got this joshing game down fine. Just wondering what all the boys’d say—that was why I didn’t get out of the water at first, before—before I thought I was asleep, you know.”

“So you’ll actually tell a lie to keep from being thought a liar? I’m disappointed in you.”

“Why, ma’am, I won’t say anything. They’ll do the talking.”

“It’ll be deceitful, just the same,” she began, and checked herself suddenly. A small twinge struck her at the thought of poor Maud, really sketching on Thumb Butte, and now disconsolately wondering what had become of lunch and fellow-artist; but she quelled this pang with a sage thought of the greatest good to the greatest number, and clapped her hands in delight. “Oh, what a silly I am, to be sure! I’ve got a lunch basket up there, but I forgot all about it in the excitement. I’m sure there’s plenty for two. Shall I bring it down to you or can you climb up if I help you? There’s water in the canteen—and it’s beautiful up there.”

“I can make it, I guess,” said the invited guest—the consummate and unblushing hypocrite. Make it he did, with her strong hand to aid; and the glen rang to the laughter of them. While behind them, all unnoted, Johnny Dines reined up on the hillside; took one sweeping glance at that joyous progress, the scarred hillside, the saddle and the dejected eohippus in the background; grinned comprehension, and discreetly withdrew.

CHAPTER III