The girl looked at the blisters on her soft palms, and again a faint little smile twitched at her face. “Neither shall I for a day or two. I have souvenirs.” He began to arrange the disordered harness, rebuckling a strap here and pulling the leather into place there. Dark eyes under long, curved lashes observed him as he moved, lean-loined and broad of shoulder, the bronze of the eternal outdoors burned into his hands and neck and lean face. “My name is Trovillion; Ruth Trovillion,” she said shyly. “I’m staying at Elkhorn Lodge, or the Dude Ranch, as you people call it.” He shook hands without embarrassment. “My name is Rowan McCoy.” Level eyes, with the blue of Western skies in them, looked straight into hers. A little wave of emotion beat through her veins. She knew, warned by the sure instinct of her sex, that this man who had torn her from the hands of death was to be no stranger in her life. “I think I saw you at the store to-day. And I’ve heard of you, from Mr. Flanders.” “Yes.” She abandoned that avenue of approach, and came to a more personal one—came to it with a face of marble except for the live eyes. “But for you I would have drowned,” she said, and shuddered. “Maybe so; maybe not.” “Yes. I couldn’t have got out alone,” she insisted. “Of course I can’t thank you. There’s no use trying. But I’ll never forget—never as long as I live.” About her there was a proud, delicate beauty that charmed him. She was at once so slender and so vital. Her face was like a fine, exquisitely cut cameo. “All right,” he agreed cheerfully. “Honours are easy then, Miss Trovillion. I lifted you out and you pulled me out.” “Oh, you can _say_ that! As if I did anything that counted.” The fount of her feelings had been touched, and she was still tremulous. It was impossible for her to dismiss this adventure as casually as he seemed ready to do. After all, it had been the most tremendous hazard of her young, well-sheltered life. When he had made sure the trap was fit for the road, McCoy turned to his companion and helped her in. She drove slowly. The cattleman rode beside her. He was going out of his way, but he found for himself a sufficient excuse. She was a slim slip of a girl who had lived her nineteen or twenty years in cities far from the primitive dangers of the wild. Probably she was unstrung from her experience and might collapse. Anyhow, he was not going to take the chance of it. CHAPTER V A RIDE STILL at the age when she was frankly the centre of her own universe, Ruth Trovillion had an abundant sense of romance. There was no intention in her decided young mind of treading a road worn dusty by the feet of the commonplace. On occasion a fine rapture filled her hours. She was still reacting to the ecstatic shock of youth’s early-morning plunge into the wonderful river of life.