She could not believe the evidence of the day’s happenings.  Would any of her people, her friends, ever believe it?  Could she tell it?  How impossible to think that a cunning Mexican might have used her to further the interests of a forlorn revolution.  She remembered the ghoulish visages of those starved rebels, and marveled at her blessed fortune in escaping them.  She was safe, and now self-preservation had some meaning for her.  Stewart’s arrival in the glade, the courage with which he had faced the outlawed men, grew as real to her now as the iron arm that clasped her.  Had it been an instinct which had importuned her to save this man when he lay ill and hopeless in the shack at Chiricahua?  In helping him had she hedged round her forces that had just operated to save her life, or if not that, more than life was to her?  She believed so.

Madeline opened her eyes after a while and found that night had fallen.  The sky was a dark, velvety blue blazing with white stars.  The cool wind tugged at her hair, and through waving strands she saw Stewart’s profile, bold and sharp against the sky.

Then, as her mind succumbed to her bodily fatigue, again her situation became unreal and wild.  A heavy languor, like a blanket, began to steal upon her.  She wavered and drifted.  With the last half-conscious sense of a muffled throb at her ear, a something intangibly sweet, deep-toned, and strange, like a distant calling bell, she fell asleep with her head on Stewart’s breast.

XII Friends from the East

Three days after her return to the ranch Madeline could not discover any physical discomfort as a reminder of her adventurous experiences.  This surprised her, but not nearly so much as the fact that after a few weeks she found she scarcely remembered the adventures at all.  If it had not been for the quiet and persistent guardianship of her cowboys she might almost have forgotten Don Carlos and the raiders.  Madeline was assured of the splendid physical fitness to which this ranch life had developed her, and that she was assimilating something of the Western disregard of danger.  A hard ride, an accident, a day in the sun and dust, an adventure with outlaws—­these might once have been matters of large import, but now for Madeline they were in order with all the rest of her changed life.

There was never a day that something interesting was not brought to her notice.  Stillwell, who had ceaselessly reproached himself for riding away the morning Madeline was captured, grew more like an anxious parent than a faithful superintendent.  He was never at ease regarding her unless he was near the ranch or had left Stewart there, or else Nels and Nick Steele.  Naturally, he trusted more to Stewart than to any one else.

“Miss Majesty, it’s sure amazin’ strange about Gene,” said the old cattleman, as he tramped into Madeline’s office.