m
till y'u give the word."

Before a week he was able to sit up in a chair for an hour or two, and
soon after could limp into the living room with the aid of a walking
stick and his hostess. Under the tan he still wore an interesting
pallor, but there could be no question that he was on the road to
health.

"A man doesn't know what he's missing until he gets shot up and is
brought to the Lazy D hospital, so as to let Miss Messiter exercise her
Christian duty on him," he drawled, cheerfully, observing the sudden
glow on her cheek brought by the reference to his unanswered question.

He made the lounge in the big sunny window his headquarters. From it
he could look out on some of the ranch activities when she was not with
him, could watch the line riders as they passed to and fro and command
a view of one of the corrals. There was always, too, the turquoise sky,
out of which poured a flood of light on the roll of hilltops. Sometimes
he read to himself, but he was still easily tired, and preferred usually
to rest. More often she read aloud to him while he lay back with his
leveled eyes gravely on her till the gentle, cool abstraction she
affected was disturbed and her perplexed lashes rose to reproach the
intensity of his gaze.

She was of those women who have the heavenborn faculty of making home
of such fortuitous elements as are to their hands. Except her piano and
such knickknacks as she had brought in a single trunk she had had to
depend upon the resources of the establishment to which she had come,
but it is wonderful how much can be done with some Navajo rugs, a
bearskin, a few bits of Indian pottery and woven baskets and a judicious
arrangement of scenic photographs. In a few days she would have her
pictures from Kalamazoo, pending which her touch had transformed the big
living room from a cheerless barn into a spot that was a comfort to
the eye and heart. To the wounded man who lay there slowly renewing the
blood he had lost the room was the apotheosis of home, less, perhaps, by
reason of what it was in itself than because it was the setting for her
presence--for her grave, sympathetic eyes, the sound of her clear voice,
the light grace of her motion. He rejoiced in the delightful intimacy
the circumstances made necessary. To hear snatches of joyous song and
gay laughter even from a distance, to watch her as she came in and out
on her daily tasks, to contest her opinions of books and life and see
how eagerly