She sat so a long interval, suffering stamped on her fine forehead, indicated in the pink and white knots formed from her clenched hands. Then, her lips partly opened and she lifted her head and looked long at the covered face of the man on the bed. Her breath was swift and shallow and her attitude that of one who nerves herself for an ordeal. Once, she looked down at the hand on the bed near her and touched with her own the hardened, soiled fingers, then gave a shake to her head that was almost a shudder, straightened in her chair and muttered aloud, "He said ... I had the sand...." She leaned forward, stretched a hand to the towel which covered the man's face, hesitated just an instant, caught her breath, lifted the shrouding cloth and gave a long, shivering sigh as she sat back in her chair. At that moment Bruce Bayard in the corral across the street, pulled the bridle over his sorrel's ears. He slung the contrivance on one arm and held the animal's hot, white muzzle in his hands a moment. He squeezed so tightly that the horse shook his head and lifted a fore foot in protest and then, alarmed, backed quickly away. "... I didn't intend it, Abe," the man muttered. "... I was thinkin' about somethin' else." CHAPTER IV A REVELATION When Bayard returned to the Manzanita House, he ran up the stairs with an eagerness that was not in the least inspired by a desire to return to his watching over the man he had chosen to succor. He strode down the hallway and into the room with his keen anticipation thinly disguised by a sham concern. And within the doorway he halted abruptly, for the woman who had helped him, whose presence there had brought him back from his horse on a run, sat at the bedside with her hands limp in her lap and about her bearing an air that quite staggered him. Her face was as nearly expressionless as a human countenance can become. It was as if something had occurred which had taken from her all emotion, all ability to respond to any mental or sensory influence. For the moment, she was crushed, and so completely that even her reflexes did not react to the horror of the revelation. She did not look at Bayard, did not move; she might have been without the sense of sight or hearing; she did not even breathe perceptibly; just sat there with a fixity that frightened him. "Why, Miss!" he cried in confused alarm. "I ... I wouldn't left you--" She roused on his cry and shook her head, and he thought she wanted him to stop, so he stood there through an awkward moment, waiting for her to say more. "Course, it was too much for you!" he concluded aloud, self-reproachfully, when she did not speak. "You're tired; this ... this takin' care of this booze-soaked carcass was too much to ask of you. I--" "Don't," she said, in a dry, flat voice, looking up at him appealingly, mastering her voice with a heroic effort. "Don't, please! This.... This booze-soaked ... carcass ... "He is my husband."