Hiram shook his head, and then Drummond wilted and sank in the sand.
Water was quickly provided, and the pulse of Jerkline Jo leaped as she saw that Hiram himself was taking the most prominent part in the whipped man's revival. It was fully five minutes before Drummond was conscious again; then Hiram helped to bear him to one of the trucks.
"Thank you, Hiram," Jo said softly as he returned.
He looked up into her eyes, which were moist round the rims. He had fought and won for his girl of romance, and he knew now that it had been she who through all the years had been beckoning him to come.
With a damp cloth she tenderly touched his bruised face here and there as the wagon train moved on again.
"Don't think any the worse of me, Hiram," she pleaded. "Perhaps I'm a roughneck, after all, as Drummond intimated. But I can't faint and carry on at the sight of blood and the sound of battering fists as most women do. I like a fight—a fair fight—a good fight—a manly fight. Life for me has been always a fight. I've learned not to shrink. Am I brutal—for a woman?"
"No," said Hiram. "I think I want you that way. Nobody could look into your eyes, Jo, and think you weren't tender and compassionate. I'd want my woman to be a fighter, I guess, when it was the time and place to fight."
Jerkline Jo's face was radiant with color, but she said softly:
"And I want my man to be a fighter. It's in my blood, it seems."
They said nothing more about it then, but each knew that love had spoken, and the unfriendly desert seemed a delectable land.