"I am so tired!" she murmured despondently. "Shall we be going on soon?"
"Not unless somebody jumps us," returned Bud. "Here, let me make you a bed in the shade. There now"—as he spread out the saddle-blankets temptingly—"you lay down and get some sleep and I'll kinder keep a watch."
"Ah, you are so kind!" she breathed, as she sank down on the bed. "Don't you know," she added, looking up at him with sleepy eyes that half concealed a smile, "I believe you like me, after all."
"Sure," confessed Bud, returning her smile as honestly; "don't you worry none about me—I like you fine."
He slipped away at this, grinning to himself, and sat down to watch the plain. All about him lay the waving grass land, tracked up by the hoofs of cattle that had vanished in the track of war. In the distance he could see the line of a fence and the ruins of a house. The trail which he had followed led on and on to the north. But all the landscape was vacant, except for his grazing horses. Above the mountains the midday thunder-caps were beginning to form; the air was very soft and warm, and—He woke up suddenly to find his head on his knees.
"Ump-um-m," he muttered, rising up and shaking himself resolutely, "this won't do—that sun is making me sleepy."
He paced back and forth, smoking fiercely at brown-paper cigarettes, and still the sleep came back. The thunder-clouds over the mountains rose higher and turned to black; they let down skirts and fringes and sudden stabs of lightning, while the wind sucked in from the south. And then, with a slash of rain, the shower was upon them.
At the first big drops Gracia stirred uneasily in her sleep. She started up as the storm burst over them; then, as Bud picked up the saddle-blankets and spread them over her, she drew him down beside her and they sat out the storm together. But it was more to them than a sharing of cover, a patient enduring of the elements, and the sweep of wind and rain. When they rose up there was a bond between them and they thrust and parried no more.
They were friends, there in the rush of falling water and the crash of lightning overhead. When the storm was over and the sun came out they smiled at each other contentedly without fear of what such smiles may mean.