“Well, if you came up the fence, there's no use going back that way; and there's sure nothing made by going away from it.--that's the way I came. Why not go on the way you're headed?” “We might as well, I suppose,” she assented; and Rowdy turned and rode by her side, grateful for the plurality of the pronoun which tacitly included him in her wanderings, and meditating many things. For one, he wondered if she were as nice a girl as her voice sounded. He could not see much of her face, because it was muffled in a white silk scarf. Only her eyes showed, and they were dark and bright. When he awoke to the fact that the wind, grown colder, beat upon her cruelly, he dropped behind a pace and took the windy side, that he might shield her with his body. But if she observed the action she gave no sign; her face was turned from him and the wind, and she rode without speaking. After long plodding, the line of posts turned unexpectedly a right angle, and Vaughan took a long, relieved breath. “We'll have the wind on our backs now,” he remarked. “I guess we may as well keep on and see where this fence goes to.” His tone was too elaborately cheerful to be very cheering. He was wondering if the girl was dressed warmly. It had been so warm and sunny before the blizzard struck, but now the wind searched out the thin places in one's clothing and ran lead in one's bones, where should be simply marrow. He fancied that her voice, when she spoke, gave evidence of actual suffering--and the heart of Rowdy Vaughan was ever soft toward a woman. “If you're cold,” he began, “I'll open up my bed and get out a blanket.” He held Dixie in tentatively. “Oh, don't trouble to do that,” she protested; but there was that in her voice which hardened his impulse into fixed resolution. “I ought to have thought of it before,” he lamented, and swung down stiffly into the snow. Her eyes followed his movement with a very evident interest while he unbuckled the pack Chub had carried since sunrise and drew out a blanket. “Stand in your stirrup,” he commanded briskly “and I'll wrap you up. It's a Navajo, and the wind will have a time trying to find a thin spot.” “You're thoughtful.” She snuggled into it thankfully. “I was cold.” Vaughan tucked it around her with more care than haste. He was pretty uncomfortable himself, and for that reason he was the more anxious that the girl should be warm. It came to him that she was a cute little schoolma'am, all right; he was glad she belonged close around the Cross L. He also wished he knew her name--and so he set about finding it out, with much guile.