"The brake's done bust," she heard the ex-Confederate say.
Another violent swing flung Ramona outward. The horses were off the road, and the coach swayed ominously on two wheels. The girl caught at the Ranger's hand and clung to it. Gently he covered her hand with his other one, released his fingers, and put a strong arm round her shoulders.
Hank's whip snaked out across the backs of the wheelers. He flung at his horses a torrent of abuse. The stage reached the bottom of the wash in a succession of lurches. Then, as suddenly as the danger had come upon them, it had passed; the stage was safely climbing the opposite side of the ravine.
The Ranger's arm slipped from the shoulders of the girl. Her hand crept from under his. He did not look at her, but he knew that a shell-pink wave had washed into the wan face.
The slim bosom of the girl rose and fell fast. Already she was beginning to puzzle over the difficulties of a clear-cut right and wrong, to discover that no unshaded line of cleavage differentiates them sometimes. Surely this young fellow could not be all bad. Of course she did not like him. She was quite sure of that. He was known as a tough citizen. He had attacked and beaten brutally her brother Rutherford—the wild brother whose dissipations she had wept and prayed over, and whose death she was now mourning. Yet Fate kept throwing him in her way to do her services. He had saved her life. He had adroitly—somehow, she did not quite know in what way—rid her of an offensive fellow traveler. She had just asked a favor of him, and there was yet another she must ask.
Ramona put off her request to the last moment. At Tascosa she left her purse in the stage seat and discovered it after the coach had started to the barn.
"My purse. I left it in the seat," she cried.
The announcement was made to the world at large, but it was intended for a particular pair of ears set close to a small head of wavy, sun-reddened hair. The owner of them ran to the stage and recovered the purse. By the time he reached Ramona, the rest of the party were inside the post-office.
She thanked him, then looked at him quickly with an effect of shy daring.
"You travel a good deal, don't you—about the country?"