Hope had not been searching for sheep, but for dead or wounded men, and finding none breathed easier. She thought of the man whose hand she had marked and who fell in such a panic among the sheep. It struck her as being a very funny incident, and laughed a little. Livingston heard the laugh and looked around in wonderment. He could see nothing amusing. This Western girl was totally different from any girl that he had known, English or American. She must possess a sense of humor out of all proportion with anything of his conception. He thought a few minutes before that he loved her, but she seemed far removed now--an absolute stranger. The boyish laugh annoyed him. His manner as he turned to her was quite as formally polite as ever her own had been. She resented it, naturally. "Step outside, please, until I drive in the ones near the gate, so that I may close it." Instinctively she obeyed, with a defiant look which was lost in the dimness of the night, and hurrying past him never stopped until she drew back with a shudder at the blanket-covered form of the dead herder. A deep roar of thunder startled her into a half-suppressed scream. In the lantern's light she had not noticed the steadily increasing darkness, or the flashes of lightning. She felt herself shaking with a nervous excitement which was half fear. Thunderstorms often made her nervous, yet she would not have acknowledged that she feared them, or any other thing. But her nervousness was only the culmination of the night, every moment of which had been a strain upon her. Another peal of thunder followed the first, fairly weakening her. She ran to her horse and, mounting, rode up near the corral. At the same instant the wagon came up, and Livingston, having placed the panel in position, turned toward it. He was close beside the girl before he saw her, and she, for an instant at a loss, sat there speechless; but as he held up the lantern, looking at her by its light, she blurted out, in a tone that she had little intention of using: "I'm going. Hope you will get along all right. Good-night." "Wait!" he exclaimed. "I will accompany you. My horse is here now. Just a moment----" "You don't need to go with me. Someone is waiting for me down there. I think I hear a whistle." "Then I will go along with you until you meet the person whose whistle you hear. You do not imagine that I will allow you to go alone?" She leaned toward him impulsively, placing her hand down upon his shoulder.