Her blue eyes were
shining at him, wide and startled. Her cheeks were flushed. A strange
look had frozen on her parted red lips, and her hair was falling loose
in a cloud of curling brown tresses about her shoulders. Jolly Roger,
dreaming of her in his insane happiness of a few minutes ago, sensed
nothing beyond the beauty and the unexpectedness of her in this first
moment. Then--swiftly--he saw the other thing. The last glow of the sun
glistened in her wet hair, her dress was sodden and clinging, and little
pools of water were widening slowly about her ragged shoes. These things
he might have expected, for she had to cross the creek. But it was the
look in her eyes that startled him, as she stood there with Peter, the
mongrel pup, clasped tightly in her arms.

"Nada, what's happened?" he asked, laying his gun on the table. "You
fell in the creek--"

"It--it's Peter," she cried, with a sobbing break in her voice. "We come
on Jed Hawkins when he was diggin' up some of his whiskey, and he was
mad, and pulled my hair, and Peter bit him--and then he picked up Peter
and threw him against a rock--and he's terribly hurt! Oh, Mister Jolly
Roger--"

She held out the pup to him, and Peter whimpered as Jolly Roger took his
wiry little face between his hands, and then lifted him gently. The girl
was sobbing, with passionate little catches in her breath, but there
were no tears in her eyes as they turned for an instant from Peter to
the gun on the table.

"If I'd had that," she cried, "I'd hev killed him!"

Jolly Roger's face was coldly gray as he knelt down on the floor and
bent over Peter.

"He--pulled your hair, you say?"

"I--forgot," she whispered, close at his shoulder. "I wasn't goin' to
tell you that. But it didn't hurt. It was Peter--"

He felt the damp caress of her curls upon his neck as she bent over him.

"Please tell me, Mister Jolly Roger--is he hurt--bad?"

With the tenderness of a woman Jolly Roger worked his fingers over
Peter's scrawny little body. And Peter, whimpering softly, felt the
infinite consolation of their touch. He was no longer afraid of Jed
Hawkins, or of pain, or of death. The soul of a dog is simple in its
measurement of blessings, and to Peter it was a great happiness to lie
here, broken and in pain, with the face of his beloved mistress over
him and Jolly Roger's hands working to mend his hurt. He whimpered when
Jolly Roger found the broken place, and he cried out like a little child