“Stewart, I do not know what to think about you,” replied Madeline.

Then followed a short silence.  Madeline saw the last bright rays of the setting sun glide up over a distant crag.  Stewart rebridled the horse and looked at the saddle-girths.

“I got off the trail.  About Don Carlos I’ll say right out, not what Nels and Nick think, but what I know.  Don Carlos hoped to make off with you for himself, the same as if you had been a poor peon slave-girl down in Sonora.  Maybe he had a deeper plot than my rebel friend told me.  Maybe he even went so far as to hope for American troops to chase him.  The rebels are trying to stir up the United States.  They’d welcome intervention.  But, however that may be, the Greaser meant evil to you, and has meant it ever since he saw you first.  That’s all.”

“Stewart, you have done me and my family a service we can never hope to repay.”

“I’ve done the service.  Only don’t mention pay to me.  But there’s one thing I’d like you to know, and I find it hard to say.  It’s prompted, maybe, by what I know you think of me and what I imagine your family and friends would think if they knew.  It’s not prompted by pride or conceit.  And it’s this:  Such a woman as you should never have come to this God-forsaken country unless she meant to forget herself.  But as you did come, and as you were dragged away by those devils, I want you to know that all your wealth and position and influence—­all that power behind you—­would never have saved you from hell to-night.  Only such a man as Nels or Nick Steele or I could have done that.”

Madeline Hammond felt the great leveling force of the truth.  Whatever the difference between her and Stewart, or whatever the imagined difference set up by false standards of class and culture, the truth was that here on this wild mountain-side she was only a woman and he was simply a man.  It was a man that she needed, and if her choice could have been considered in this extremity it would have fallen upon him who had just faced her in quiet, bitter speech.  Here was food for thought.

“I reckon we’d better start now,” he said, and drew the horse close to a large rock.  “Come.”

Madeline’s will greatly exceeded her strength.  For the first time she acknowledged to herself that she had been hurt.  Still, she did not feel much pain except when she moved her shoulder.  Once in the saddle, where Stewart lifted her, she drooped weakly.  The way was rough; every step the horse took hurt her; and the slope of the ground threw her forward on the pommel.  Presently, as the slope grew rockier and her discomfort increased, she forgot everything except that she was suffering.

“Here is the trail,” said Stewart, at length.

Not far from that point Madeline swayed, and but for Stewart’s support would have fallen from the saddle.  She heard him swear under his breath.

“Here, this won’t do,” he said.  “Throw your leg over the pommel.  The other one—­there.”