第89页 / 共439页

"Let her sleep. It will be the making of her. She's fair done.

But ain't she plucky? And that spirited! Ready to fight so long

as she can drag a foot. And her so sorter slim and delicate.

Funny how she hangs onto her grudge against me. Sho! I hadn't

ought to have kissed her, but I'll never tell her so."

He went back to his coffee and bacon, dined, and lay down for a

siesta beneath a cottonwood some distance removed from the

live-oaks where Miss Kinney reposed. For two or three hours he

slept soundly, having been in the saddle all night. It was

mid-afternoon when he awoke, and the sun was sliding down the

blue vault toward the sawtoothed range to the west. He found the

girl still lost to the world in deep slumber.