He was looking around at her, she knew.  Now she must see his face after this transformation in him which had made her fears of his competency silly imaginings; after she had linked her name with his in an overwhelming village sensation.  She was stricken by unanalyzable emotions and by a horror of her nearness to him, her contact with his very blood, and his power.  She was conscious of a glimpse of his turning profile, still transfixed with the cool purpose of action.  Then they were gazing full at each other, eyes into eyes, directly, questioningly.  He was smiling as he had on the pass; as he had when he stood with his arms full of mail waiting for the signal to deposit his load.  His devil had slipped back into his inner being.

He spoke first, and in the voice that went with his vaguest mood; the voice in which he had described his escape from the dinosaur whose scales had become wedged in the defile at the critical moment.

“You have a strong thumb and it must be tired, as well as all bluggy,” he said, falling into a childhood symbol for taking the whole affair in play.

Could he be the same man who had said, “I am going to kill you!” so relentlessly?  He had eased the situation with the ready gift he had for easing situations; but, at the same time, he had made those unanalyzable emotions more complex, though they were swept into the background for the moment.  He glanced down at his leg with comprehending surprise.

“Now, certainly, you are free of all responsibility,” he added.  “You kept the strength in me to escape the fate you feared.  Jim Galway will make a tourniquet and relieve you.”

The first available thing for tightening the tourniquet was the barrel of Pete Leddy’s gun and the first suggestion for material came from her.  It was the sash of her gown, which Galway knotted with his strong, sunburned fingers.

When she could lift her numbed thumb from its task and rose to her feet she had a feeling of relief, as if she were free of magnetic bonds and uncanny personal proximity.  The incident was closed—­surely closed.  She was breathing a prayer of thanks when a remark from Galway to Jack brought back her apprehension.

“I guess you will have to postpone catching to-day’s train,” he said.

Certainly, Jack must remain until his wound had healed and his strength had returned.  And where would he go?  He could not camp out on the desert.  As Jasper Ewold had the most commodious bungalow it seemed natural that any wounded stranger should be taken there.  The idea chilled her as an insupportable intrusion.  Jack hesitated a moment.  He was evidently considering whether he could not still keep to his programme.

“Yes, Jim, I’m afraid I shall have to ask you for a cot for a few days,” he said, finally.

Again he had the right thought at the right moment.  Had he surmised what was passing in her mind?

“Seeing that you’ve got Pete Leddy out of town, I should say that you were fairly entitled to a whole bed,” Jim drawled.  “These two Indians here can make a hustle to get some kind of a litter.”