"I was riding about twenty yards behind him. Suddenly I saw his gun go up, and stopped. I thought it might be an antelope. As soon as he had fired, he turned and told me he had shot Weaver. The poor boy was crazy with fear, now that he had done it. I took his gun and made him hide in the big rocks, while I cut across toward the cañon. The men saw me, and gave chase."
"They fired at you. Thank God, none of them hit you," said Keller, with emphasis.
Her swift gaze appreciated the deep feeling that welled from him. "Of course they did not know I was a woman. All they could see was that somebody was riding through the chaparral."
"Jimmie, what do you think of a girl game enough to take so big a chance to save a friend? Deserves a Carnegie medal, don't you reckon?" Keller put the question to the third passenger, using him humorously as a vent to his feelings.
Phyllis did not look at him, nor he at her. "And what do you think of a man game enough to take the same chance to save a girl who was not even a friend?" the girl asked of little Jimmie, as lightly as she could.
"Wasn't she? Well, if my friends will save my life every time I need them to, like this enemy did, I'll be satisfied with them a-plenty."
"He stood by her, too," she answered, trying to keep the matter impersonal.
"Perhaps he wanted to make her his friend," Larrabie suggested.
"There is no perhaps about his success," she said quietly, her gaze just beyond the ears of her horse. The young man dared now to look at her—a child of the sun despite her duskiness. Eagerly he awaited the deep, lustrous eyes that would presently sweep round upon him, big and dark and sparkling. When she turned her head, they were full of that new womanly dignity that yet did not obscure the shy innocence.
"Look!" Jimmie Tryon pointed suddenly to the figure of a man disappearing from the road into the mesquite two hundred yards in front of them.