“You mustn’t. You’re badly hurt. I—I’ll ride back for help.” She sprang to her feet. “But first I must get you water.”
He stared at her as one regards a desert mirage. “Water!” he repeated unbelievingly. “You know where—If you could—”
A sudden moisture dimmed her eyes, but she winked it resolutely back. “There’s a little spring the other side of the trail,” she explained. “You lie quietly and I’ll be back in just a minute.”
Stumbling in her haste, she turned and ran past the buttress and on toward the trail. Not a hundred feet beyond, a tiny spring bubbled up in the rocks, and dropping down beside it, the girl jerked the pins from her hat and let the cool water trickle into the capacious crown of the Stetson. It seemed to take an eternity to fill, but at length the water ran over the brim, and carefully guarding her precious burden, she hurried back again.
The man was watching for her—eagerly, longingly, with an underlying touch of apprehensive doubt, as if he half feared to find her merely one of those dreamlike phantoms that had haunted him through the long, painful hours. As the girl sank down beside him, there was a look in his eyes that sent a strange thrill 218 through her and caused her hands to tremble, sending a little stream of water trickling over the soggy hat-brim to the ground.
She steadied herself resolutely and bending forward held the hat against Buck’s lips. As he plunged his face into it and began to suck up the water in great, famished gulps, the girl’s lips quivered, and her eyes, resting on the matted tangle of dark hair, filled with sudden tears.