Mary Hope was very white, very limp, and her eyes were closed. On her cheeks he saw where tears had lately been. Her mouth had a pitiful little droop. He sat down, still holding her like a child, and felt tentatively of her arms, her shoulders, vaguely prepared to feel the crunch of a broken bone. There was no water nearer than the ranch. Jamie, having rolled over twice, was lying on his side near a scraggly buck-brush, looking back up the hill, apparently wondering whether it would be worth while to get up. The hired horse, having found a niche wherein to set his hind feet, stood staring down through the Slide, afraid to come farther, unable to retreat. One side of Mary Hope's face was dusty, the skin roughened with small scratches where she had fallen. With his handkerchief Lance very gently wiped away the dust, took off her hat and fanned her face, watching absently two locks of hair that blew back and forth across her forehead with the breeze made by the swaying hat brim. She was not dead! She could not be dead, with that short fall. Then he saw that she was breathing faintly, unevenly, and in another minute he saw her lashes quiver against her tanned cheek. But her eyes did not open, the color did not flow back into her face. "Oh, girl--girl, wake up!" With a little shake he pulled her close to him. "Open your eyes. I want to see your eyes. I want to see if they are just as blue as ever. Girl--oh, you poor little girl!" He had been hating her, furious at the insult she had given his family. Angry as he was with the Lorrigans, resenting fiercely what they had done, he had hated Mary Hope Douglas more, because the hurt was more personal, struck deep into a part of his soul that had grown tender. But he could not hate her now--not when she lay there in his arms with her tear-stained cheek against his heart, her eyes shut, and with that pathetic droop to her lips. Gently he tucked back the locks of hair that kept blowing across her forehead. Very tenderly, with a whimsical pretense at self-pity, he upbraided her for the trouble she was giving him. "Must I go clear down to the ranch and pack up water in my hat, and slosh it on your face? I'll do that, girl, if you don't open your eyes and look at me. _You're_ not hurt; _are_ you hurt? You'd better wake up and tell me, or I'll have to take you right up in my arms and carry you all the way down to the house, and ride like heck for a doctor, and--" "Ye will not!" she retorted faintly, and unexpectedly he was looking into her eyes, bluer than he had remembered them; troubled, questioning--but stubborn against his suggestion. She moved uneasily, and he lifted her to the bank beside him and put one arm behind her, so that she leaned against him. "Oh, very well--then I will not. You'll walk with me to the house, and we'll let Belle--"