t.

"Well, let's get somewhere," he said abruptly. "If you're too saddle
sore to ride, walk a while. I'll go slower."

She walked, and the exercise relieved the cramping ache in her limbs.
Roaring Bill's slower pace was fast enough at that. She followed till
her strength began to fail. And when in spite of her determination she
lagged behind, he stopped at the first water.

"We'll camp here," he said. "You're about all in, and we can't get
anywhere to-night, I see plainly."

Hazel accepted this dictum as best she could. She eat down on a mossy
rock while he stripped the horses of their gear and staked them out.
Then Bill started a fire and fixed the roll of bedding by it for her to
sit on. Dusk crept over the forest while he cooked supper, making a
bannock in the frying pan to take the place of bread; and when they had
finished eating and washed the few dishes, night shut down black as the
pit.

They talked little. Hazel was in the grip of utter forlornness, moody,
wishful to cry. Roaring Bill lumped on his side of the fire, staring
thoughtfully into the blaze. After a long period of abstraction he
glanced at his watch, then arose and silently arranged her bed. After
that he spread his saddle blankets and lay down.

Hazel crept into the covers and quietly sobbed herself to sleep. The
huge and silent land appalled her. She had been chucked neck and crop
into the primitive, and she had not yet been able to react to her
environment. She was neither faint-hearted nor hysterical. The grind
of fending for herself in a city had taught her the necessity of
self-control. But she was worn out, unstrung, and there is a limit to
a woman's endurance.

As on the previous night, she wakened often and glanced over to the
fire. Roaring Bill kept his accustomed position, flat in the glow.
She had no fear of him now. But he was something of an enigma. She
had few illusions about men in general. She had encountered a good
many of them in one way and another since reaching the age when she
coiled her hair on top of her head. And she could not recall one--not
even Jack Barrow--with whom she would have felt at ease in a similar
situation. She knew that there was a something about her that drew
men. If the presence of her had any such effect on Bill Wagstaff, he
painstakingly concealed it.

And she was duly grateful for that. She had not believed it a
characteristic of his type--the virile, intensely masculine