"What you got there?" she inquired, as he came back holding his hat, and Bowles showed her a crownful of water that he had brought from a pool in the gulch.
"Ah!" sighed Dixie, and drank out of it without scruple, long and deep. "Say, that's good," she said; "now pour some on my hands—they're all scratched up." He did that too, and loaned her his neck handkerchief to sop up the last of the wet.
"Well, it's a wonder you wouldn't ask a few questions," she observed at length, bathing her grimy face with the handkerchief. "'How did it happen?' or 'How're you feeling?' or something like that!"
She smiled naturally at him now, fluffing out her dark hair that hung like an Indian's in heavy braids; and Bowles' face lighted up and then flushed a rosy red.
"I see you are feeling better," he said, sitting down off to one side, and decorously regarding his wet hat, "so how did it happen?"
"Well," began Dixie, ruefully inspecting her torn hands, "all I can remember is feeling my horse going down and jerking my feet out of the stirrups—then I fetched up in that juniper. I scrambled out the minute I struck—afraid old Rufus would fall on me—and that's where I hurt my knee—I bumped it against a rock."
She felt the injured limb over carefully and shook her head.
"I'm afraid I can't travel on that for a while," she said. "So get me your coat to put under it and prop it up, and we'll talk about something pleasant. It'll be all right, I reckon, after I rest a while, but that fall certainly jarred me up.
"Say," she observed, as Bowles came back with his coat, "that was pretty good, wasn't it, what I was telling you the other day—about nursing you back to health and strength. Looks like you're the nurse, the way it turns out. But you're going to make a good one," she went on, as he tucked the coat under her knee; "I can see that. Now, most people, when you get a hurt, or a fall, or something, they come rushing up to where you're making faces and ask a lot of foolish questions—'Are you hurt?' and 'Did you fall?' and all that, until you want to kill 'em. But you haven't hardly said a word."
"No," said Bowles, blushing and looking away. "I'm awfully sorry you fell—hope I didn't make you. Is there anything more I can do?"