"Oh, doesn't he?" asked Polly demurely. She did not think it necessary to mention that every unmarried man who came to the ranch wanted to make love to her before he left. "I'm glad you told me, because I'm only a girl and I don't know much about it. And since you're a man, of course you know."
"That's the way it is," he assured her, solemn as a pouter.
She bit her lip to keep from laughing out, but on the heels of her mirth came a swift reproach. In his knowledge of life he might be a boy, but in one way at least he had proved himself a man. He had taken his life in his hands and ridden to save her without a second thought. He had fought a good fight, one that would be a story worth telling when she had become an old woman with grandchildren at her knee.
"Does your foot hurt you much?" she asked gently.
"It sort o' keeps my memory jogged up. It's a kind of forget-me-not souvenir, for a good boy, compliments of a Mescalero buck, name unknown, probably now permanently retired from his business of raisin' Cain. But it might be a heap worse. They would've been glad to collect our scalps if it hadn't been onconvenient, I expect."
"Yes," she agreed gravely.
He sat up abruptly. "Say, what about Billie? I left him wounded outside.
Did yore folks find him?"
"Yes. It seems the Apaches trapped them in the stable. They roped horses and came straight for the cañon. They found Mr. Prince, but they had no time to stop then. Father is looking after him now. He said he was going to take him to the house in the buckboard."
"Is he badly hurt?"
"Jean thinks he will be all right. Mr. Prince told him it was only a flesh wound, but the muscles were so paralysed he couldn't get around."