Beside, his sleeve was ripped its entire length, and the lion's claws had cut deep into his arm. The breast of his shirt was in strips. "I say! I'm hurt, worse than I thought, eh?" he said, a little uncertainly. He wavered a moment on his sound foot, and then sank slowly to the grass. "Wait! Don't let yourself go!" exclaimed the girl, getting into quick action. "It isn't so bad." She ran for the leather water-bottle that hung from her saddle. Molly had stood through the trouble without moving. Now the girl filled the bottle at the spring. Pratt Sanderson was lying back on his elbows, and the white lids were lowered over his black eyes. The treatment the range girl gave him was rather rough, but extremely efficacious. She dashed half the contents of the bottle into his face, and he sat up, gasping and choking. She tore away his tattered shirt in a most matter-of-fact manner and began to bathe the scratches on his chest with her kerchief (quickly unknotted from around her throat), which she had saturated with water. Fortunately, the wounds were not very deep, after all. "You--you must think me a silly sort of chap," he gasped. "Foolish to keel over like this----" "You haven't been used to seeing blood," the girl observed. "That makes a difference. I've been binding up the boys' cuts and bruises all my life. Never was such a place as the old Bar-T for folks getting hurt." "Bar-T?" ejaculated the young man, with sudden interest. "Then you must be Miss Rugley, Captain Dan Rugley's daughter?" "Yes, sir," said the girl, quietly. "Captain Rugley is my father." "And you're going to put on that very clever spectacle at the Jackleg schoolhouse next month? I've heard all about it--and what you have done toward making it what Bill Edwards calls a howling success. I'm stopping with Bill. Mrs. Edwards is my mother's friend, and I'm the advance guard of a lot of Amarillo people who are coming out to the Edwardses just to see your 'Pageant of the Panhandle.' Bill and his wife are no end enthusiastic about it." The deeper color had gradually faded out of the girl's cheeks. She was cool enough now; but she kept her eyes lowered, just the same. He would have liked to see their expression once more. There had been a startled look in their grey depths when first she glanced at him. "I am afraid they make too much of my part in the affair," said she, quietly. "I am only one of the committee----" "But they say you wrote it all," the young fellow interposed, eagerly. "Oh--_that_! It happened to be easy for me to do so. I have always been deeply interested in the Panhandle--'The Great American Desert' as the old geographies used to call all this great Middle West, of Kansas, Nebraska, the Indian Territory, and Upper Texas.