"No," he answered humorously. "Did it on a piece of lead. . . . How much is it, Doctor?"
"Two dollars," she told him, busied with the drying of her own hands. "Better let me look at it again in the morning if it pains you."
He laid two silver dollars in her palm, hesitated a moment and then went out.
"She's got the nerve," was his thoughtful estimate as he went to his corner table in the dining-room. "But I don't believe she is going to last long in San Juan. . . . Funny she should come to a place like this, anyhow. . . . Wonder what the V stands for?"
At any rate the hand had been skilfully treated and bandaged; he nodded at it approvingly. Then, with his meal set before him, he divided his thoughts pretty evenly between the girl and the recent shooting at the Casa Blanca. The sense was strong upon him as it had been many a time that before very long either Rod Norton or Jim Galloway would lie as the sheepman from Las Palmas was lying, while the other might watch his sunrises and sunsets with a strange, new emotion of security.
The sheriff, who had not eaten for twelve hours, was beginning his meal when the newest stranger in San Juan came into the dining-room. She had arranged her lustrous copper-brown hair becomingly, and looked fresh and cool and pretty. Norton approved of her with his keen eyes while he watched her go to her place at a table across the room. As she sat down, giving no sign of having noted him, her back toward him, he continued to observe and to admire her slender, perfect figure and the strong, sensitive hands busied with her napkin.
A slovenly, half-grown Indian girl, Anita, the cook's daughter, came in from the kitchen, directed the slumbrous eyes of her race upon the sheriff who fitted well in a woman's eye, and went to serve the single other late diner. Norton caught a fleeting view of V. D. Page's throat and cheek as she turned slightly in speaking with Anita. As the serving-maid withdrew Norton rose to his feet and crossed the room to the far table.
"May I bring my things over and eat with you?" he asked when he stood looking down on her and she had lifted her eyes curiously to his. "If you've come to stay you can't go on forever not knowing anybody here, you know. Since you've got to know us sooner or later why not begin to get acquainted? Here and now and with me? I'm Roderick Norton."
One must have had far less discernment than she not to have felt instinctively that the great bulk of human conventions would shrivel and vanish before they could come this far across the desert lands. Besides, the man standing over her looked straight and honestly into her eyes and for a little she glimpsed again the youth of him veiled by the sternness his life had set into his soul and upon his face.
"It is kind of you to have pity upon me in my isolation," she answered lightly and without hesitation. "And, to tell the truth, I never was so terribly lonesome in all my life."