"Yes, I know you saved me--twice, this time at much risk," resumed the girl. "Did you want pay so soon? You'd--you'd--"
"Oh! Oh! Oh!"
It was his voice that now broke in. He could not speak at all beyond the exclamation under torture.
"I didn't believe that story about you," she added after a long time. "But you are not what you looked, not what I thought you were. So what you say must be sometime is never going to be at all."
"Did he tell you that about me?" demanded Will Banion savagely. "Woodhull--did he say that?"
"I have told you, yes. My father knew. No wonder he didn't trust you. How could he?"
She moved now as though to leave the wagon, but he raised a hand.
"Wait!" said he. "Look yonder! You'd not have time now to reach camp."
In the high country a great prairie fire usually or quite often was followed by a heavy rainstorm. What Banion now indicated was the approach of yet another of the epic phenomena of the prairies, as rapid, as colossal and as merciless as the fire itself.