Shivering with cold, the Texan raised himself to a sitting posture. "Where's Bat?" he asked. "An' why ain't he onsaddled those horses, an' built a fire? I'm froze stiff." "Bat has gone to--to find Winthrop," answered the girl, with a painful catch in her voice. "He wouldn't wait, and I had no matches, and yours were all wet, and I couldn't loosen the cinches." Tex passed his hand over his forehead, as if trying to remember, and his fingers prodded tenderly at his jaw. "I recollect bein' in the water, an' the pilgrim was there, an' we were scrappin' an' he punched me in the jaw. He carries a whallop up his sleeve like the kick of a mule. But what we was scrappin' about, an' where he is now, an' how I come here, is somethin' I don't savvy." Step by step the girl detailed what had happened while the Texan listened in silence. "And now," she concluded, "he's gone. Just when--" her voice broke and once more she buried her face in her arms. Tex saw that she was sobbing silently. He felt for his "makings" and drew from his pocket a little sack of soggy tobacco and some wet papers. He returned them to his pocket and rose to his feet. "You're cold," he said softly. "There's dry matches in the pack. I'll make a fire an' get those wet saddles off the horses." Alice did not look up and the man busied himself with the pack. A few minutes later she felt his fingers upon her shoulder. He pointed toward a fire that crackled cheerfully from the depths of a bull pine thicket. "I fixed you up a shelter tent and spread your blankets. The tarp kep' 'em tolerable dry. Go over there an' get off those clothes. You must be wet through--nothin' short of a divin' suit would have kep' that rain out!" "But----" He forestalled the objection. "There won't be any one to bother you. I'm goin' down the creek." The girl noticed that his horse, saddled with Endicott's saddle stood close behind her. "I didn't mean that!" she exclaimed. "But you are cold--chilled to the bone. You need the fire more than I do." The man shook his head: "I'll be goin' now," he said. "You'd better make you some coffee." "You're going to--to----"