ma'am," he said, after watching
her for a few minutes. "An' I'm mighty glad that you do. Most women
would have been pretty nearly flustered over a snake bite."

"Why," she returned, without looking up, but exhibiting a little
embarrassment, which betrayed itself in a slight flush, "I really think
that I was a little excited--especially when you came riding up to the
porch." She thought of his words, when, looking at her accusingly, he
had told her that she was "a hell of a snake," and the flush grew,
suffusing her face. This of course he had not known and never would
know, but the words had caused her many smiles during the night.

"You didn't show it much," he observed. "You must have took right
a-hold. Some women would have gone clean off the handle. They
wouldn't have been able to do anything."

Her lips twitched, but she still gave her attention to her sewing,
treating his talk with a mild interest.

"There is nothing about a snake bite to become excited over. That is,
if treatment is applied in time. In your case the tourniquet kept the
poison from getting very far into your system. If you hadn't thought
of that it might have gone very hard with you."

"That rope around my leg wouldn't have done me a bit of good though,
ma'am, if I hadn't stumbled onto your cabin. I don't know when seein'
a woman has pleased me more."

She smiled enigmatically, her eyelashes flickering slightly. But she
did not answer.

Until noon she sewed, and he lay lazily back in the chair, watching her
sometimes, sometimes looking at the country around him. They talked
very little. Once, when he had been looking at her for a long time,
she suddenly raised her eyes and they met his fairly. Both smiled, but
he saw a blush mantle her cheeks.

At noon she rose and entered the cabin. A little later she called to
him, telling him that dinner was ready. He washed from the tin basin
that stood on the bench just outside the door, and entering sat at the
table and ate heartily.

After dinner he did not see her again for a time, and becoming wearied
of the chair he set out on a short excursion to the river. When he
returned she was seated on the porch and looked up at him with a demure
smile.

"You will be quite active by to-morrow," she said.

"I ain't feelin' exactly lazy now," he returned, showing a surprising
agility in reaching his chair.

When the sun began to swim low over the hills, he looked at her with a
curiou