"I ain't such a sweep as y'u think, girl. Some day I'll sure
tell y'u all about it, and how I have loved y'u ever since y'u scooped
me up in your car. You're the gamest little lady! To see y'u come
a-sailin' down after me, so steady and businesslike, not turning a hair
when the bullets hummed--I sure do love y'u, Helen." And then he fell
upon her first name and called her by it a hundred times softly to
himself.

This happened when she was alone with him, just before the doctor came.
She heard it with starry eyes and with a heart that flushed for joy a
warmer color into her cheeks. Brushing back the short curls, she kissed
his damp forehead. It was in the thick of the battle, before he had
weathered that point where the issues of life and death pressed closely,
and even in the midst of her great fears it brought her comfort. She was
to think often of it later, and always the memory was to be music in
her heart. Even when she denied her love for him, assured herself it was
impossible she could care for so shameful a villain, even then it was
a sweet torture to allow herself the luxury of recalling his broken
delirious phrases. At the very worst he could not be as bad as
they said; some instinct told her this was impossible. His fearless
devil-may-care smile, his jaunty, gallant bearing, these pleaded against
the evidence for him. And yet was it conceivable that a man of spirit, a
gentleman by training at least, would let himself lie under the odium
of such a charge if he were not guilty? Her tangled thoughts fought this
profitless conflict for days. Nor could she dismiss it from her mind.
Even after he began to mend she was still on the rack. For in some
snatch of good talk, when the fine quality of the man seemed to glow in
his face, poignant remembrance would stab her with recollection of the
difference between what he was and what he seemed to be.

One of the things that had been a continual surprise to Helen was the
short time required by these deep-cheated and clean-blooded Westerners
to recover from apparently serious wounds. It was scarce more than two
weeks since Bannister had filled the bunkhouse with wounded men, and
already two of them were back at work and the third almost fit for
service. For perhaps three days the sheepman's life hung in the balance,
after which his splendid constitution and his outdoor life began to
tell. The thermometer showed that the fever had slipped down a notch,
and he was now sleep