“But—are you well enough?” he protested. “Wait—a little longer.”
“I’m weak—dizzy. But I want to get down.”
He lifted her—what a light burden now!—and stood her upright beside him, and supported her as she essayed to walk with halting steps. She was like a stripling of a boy; the bright, small head scarcely reached his shoulder. But now, as she clung to his arm, the rider’s costume she wore did not contradict, as it had done at first, his feeling of her femininity. She might be the famous Masked Rider of the uplands, she might resemble a boy; but her outline, her little hands and feet, her hair, her big eyes and tremulous lips, and especially a something that Venters felt as a subtle essence rather than what he saw, proclaimed her sex.
She soon tired. He arranged a comfortable seat for her under the spruce that overspread the camp-fire.
“Now tell me—everything,” she said.
He recounted all that had happened from the time of his discovery of the rustlers in the cañon up to the present moment.
“You shot me—and now you’ve saved my life?”
“Yes. After almost killing you I’ve pulled you through.”
“Are you glad?”
“I should say so!”