That weariness clouded his brain ten miles out.  He built a fire in a cover of pines and slept beside it.  Before dawn he was up and out again.  In the first gray of the daylight he reached a little store at a crossroad, and here he paused for breakfast.  A tousled girl, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, served him in the kitchen.  The first glimpse of the hollow cheeks and the unshaven face of Bull Hunter quite awakened her.  Bull could feel her watching him, as she glided about the room.  He sunk his head between his shoulders and glared down at the table.  No doubt she would begin to gibe at him before long.  Most women did.  He prepared himself to meet with patience that incredible sting and penetrating hurt of a woman’s mockery.

But there was no mockery forthcoming.  The sun was still not up when he paid his bill and hastened to the door of the old building.  Quick footsteps followed him, a hand touched his shoulders, and he turned and looked suspiciously down into the face of the girl.  It was a frightened face, he thought, and very pretty.  At some interval between the time when he first saw her and the present, she had found time to rearrange her hair and make it smooth.  Color was pulsing in her cheeks.

“Stranger,” she said softly, “what are you running away from?”

The question slowly penetrated the mind of Bull; he was still bewildered by the change in her—­something electric, to be felt rather than noted with the eye.

“They ain’t any reason for hurrying on,” she urged.  “I—­I can hide you, easy.  Nobody could find where I’ll put you, and there you can rest up.  You must be tolerable tired.”

There was no doubt about it.  There was kindness as well as anxiety in her voice.  For the second time in his entire life, Bull decided that a woman could be something more than an annoyance.  She was placing a value on him, just as Jessie, three days before, had placed a value on him; and it disturbed Bull.  For so many years, he had been mocked and scorned by his uncle and cousins that deep in his mind was engraved the certainty that he was useless.  He decided to hurry on before the girl found out the truth.

“I can still walk,” he said, “and, while I can walk, I got to go south.  But—­you gimme heart, lady.  You gimme a pile of heart to keep going.  Maybe”—­he paused, uncertain what to say next, and yet obviously she expected something more—­“I’ll get a chance to come back this way, and if I do, I’ll see you!  You can lay to that—­I’ll see you!”

He was gone before she could answer, and he was wondering why she had looked down with that sudden color and that queer, pleased smile.  It would be long before Bull understood, but, even without understanding, he found that his heart was lighter and an odd warmth suffused him.

The rising of the sun found him in the pale desert with the magic of the hills growing distant behind him, and he settled to a different step through the thin sand—­a short, choppy step.  His weight was against him here, but it would be even a greater disadvantage to a horseman, and with this in mind, he pressed steadily south.