Joan was panting, the knife that had cut his bonds still open in her hand. They stood face to face, a little space between them, her great eyes pouring their terrified sympathy into his soul. Neither spoke, a daze over them, a numbness on their tongues, the dull shock of death's close passing bewildering and deep. Mackenzie breathed deeply, his brain clearing out of its racing whirl, and became conscious of Joan's hand grasping his. Behind them the ammunition in the burning wagon began to explode, and Joan, shuddering as with cold, covered her white face with her hands and sobbed aloud. Mackenzie touched her shoulder. "Joan! O Joan, Joan!" he said. Joan, shivering, her shoulders lifted as if to fend against a winter blast, only cried the harder into her hands. He stood with hand touching her shoulder lightly, the quiver of her body shaking him to the heart. But no matter how inviting the opening, a man could not speak what rose in his heart to say, standing as he stood, a debtor in such measure. To say what he would have said to Joan, he must stand clear and towering in manliness, no taint of humiliation on his soul. Mackenzie groaned in spirit, and his words were a groan, as he said again: "Joan! O Joan, Joan!" "I knew they'd come tonight--I couldn't sleep." "Thank God for your wakefulness!" said he. She was passing out of the reefs of terror, calming as a wind falls at sunset. Mackenzie pressed her arm, drawing her away a little. "That ammunition--we'd better----" "Yes," said Joan, and went with him a little farther down the slope. Mackenzie put his hand to his face where the flames had licked it, and to the back of his head where his scorched hair broke crisply under his palm. Joan looked at him, the aging stamp of waking and worry in her face, exclaiming pityingly when she saw his hurts. "It served me right; I stumbled into their hands like a blind kitten!" he said, not sparing himself of scorn. "It's a cattleman's trick; many an older hand than you has gone that way," she said. "But if I'd have waked and watched like you, Joan, they wouldn't have got me. I started to watch, but I didn't keep it up like you. When I should have been awake, I was sleeping like a sluggard." "The cowards!" said Joan. "I let one of them sneak up behind me, after they'd clubbed two of the dogs to death, and grab me and get my gun! Great God! I deserve to be burned!" "Hush!" she chided, fearfully. "Hush!" "One of them was Hector Hall--he came after his guns. If I'd been a man, the shadow of a man, I'd made him swallow them the day I took--the time he left them here." "Matt was with him," said Joan. "You couldn't do anything; no man could do anything, against Matt Hall." "They handled me like a baby," said he, bitterly, "and I, and I, wanting to be a sheepman! No wonder they think I'm a soft and simple fool up here, that goes on the reputation of a lucky blow!" "There's a man on a horse," said Joan. "He's coming this way."