It was the time, inevitable though it may be long delayed, of relaxing nerves and muscles. Betty sat down limply, her hands loose in her lap, her eyes drawn to their fire, looking tired and wistful. Kendric, looking at her, felt a hot rush of anger at Zoraida for being the cause of their present condition. Betty lifted her head and caught the expression molding his face. She was wrapped about with her red gown and Zoraida's cloak; her ankles were bare; then were scratches on them; her sandals looked already worn out; her hair was tumbled and snarled. She shook it loose and began combing it through with her fingers, then twisting it up into two loose brown braids. "If we do have to stay a while," said Betty, gathering her courage in both hands, looking up at him an managing a smile, "I'll show you how I can cozy the place up. Tomorrow, while you're doing the man's part and finding us something to eat, I'll show you what a housekeeper I can be. Why, I can make this just like home; you'll see." While he was doing the man's part! In her mind, then, it was all simplified and reduced to that. His, naturally, was to be the task of furnishing food, for nothing was clearer than that they must eat and that filling the larder was Jim's affair and not Betty's. Where he was to get food and how and what kind of food it might be was to be left to him. There was Betty for you, quite content to leave such matters where they properly belonged--in a man's hands. But he might rest assured that whatever he brought in, be it a handful of acorns or pine nuts or the carcass of a lean ground squirrel, would be, in Betty's eye, splendid! "Somehow," he burst out, "in spite of Zoraida and all the bandits in Mexico, we'll carry on!" "Of course," said Betty. He saw that she was leaning back against the rocks, that her whole body drooped, that she looked wearied out. "I'm going out for some boughs, the softest I can find handy," he said. "We'll have to sleep on them. And while I'm doing that I've got to figure out a way to bring some water up here. We don't know what's ahead and we'd be in hard luck bottled up here all day tomorrow with nothing to drink. Lord, I'd give a lot for a tin bucket!" He made a little heap of dead wood close to her hand so that she could keep her fire going, and put down on the other side of her his rifle and the long obsidian knife, planning to use his pocket knife for the work at hand. "You won't go far?" asked Betty. "Only a few steps," he assured her. "I'll hear if you call. And you have the rifle handy." He was going out when Betty's voice arrested him. "It's the housekeeper's place to have the buckets ready," was what she said. "What do you mean by that?" he asked. "I'll show you when you come back. You'll hurry, won't you?" "Sure thing," he answered. And went about his task.