ur back has closed. If you lie
still three days the one in your breast will close and you'll be safe.
The danger from hemorrhage will be over."

He had spoken with earnest sincerity, almost eagerness.

"Why--do you--want me--to get well?" she asked, wonderingly.

The simple question seemed unanswerable except on grounds of humanity.
But the circumstances under which he had shot this strange girl, the
shock and realization, the waiting for death, the hope, had resulted in
a condition of mind wherein Venters wanted her to live more than he had
ever wanted anything. Yet he could not tell why. He believed the killing
of the rustler and the subsequent excitement had disturbed him. For how
else could he explain the throbbing of his brain, the heat of his blood,
the undefined sense of full hours, charged, vibrant with pulsating
mystery where once they had dragged in loneliness?

"I shot you," he said, slowly, "and I want you to get well so I shall
not have killed a woman. But--for your own sake, too--"

A terrible bitterness darkened her eyes, and her lips quivered.

"Hush," said Venters. "You've talked too much already."

In her unutterable bitterness he saw a darkness of mood that could not
have been caused by her present weak and feverish state. She hated the
life she had led, that she probably had been compelled to lead. She
had suffered some unforgivable wrong at the hands of Oldring. With that
conviction Venters felt a shame throughout his body, and it marked the
rekindling of fierce anger and ruthlessness. In the past long year he
had nursed resentment. He had hated the wilderness--the loneliness of
the uplands. He had waited for something to come to pass. It had come.
Like an Indian stealing horses he had skulked into the recesses of the
canyons. He had found Oldring's retreat; he had killed a rustler; he had
shot an unfortunate girl, then had saved her from this unwitting act,
and he meant to save her from the consequent wasting of blood, from
fever and weakness. Starvation he had to fight for her and for himself.
Where he had been sick at the letting of blood, now he remembered it in
grim, cold calm. And as he lost that softness of nature, so he lost his
fear of men. He would watch for Oldring, biding his time, and he would
kill this great black-bearded rustler who had held a girl in bondage,
who had used her to his infamous ends.

Venters surmised this much of the change in him--idleness had passed;
keen, fi