Her first instinct was to keep to the road.  She walked on down toward the valley very rapidly.  But going down meant meeting darkness.  She began to be unreasonably afraid of the night.  She was afflicted by an old, old childish, immemorial dread of bears.  In spite of the chill, she was very warm, her tongue dry with rapid breathing of the thin air.  She was intolerably thirsty.  The sound of water called to her in a lisping, inhuman voice.  She resisted till she was ashamed of her cowardice, stepped furtively off the track, scrambled down a slope, parted some branches, and found herself on a rock above a little swirling pool.  On the other side a man kneeling over the water lifted a white and startled face.

Through the eerie green twilight up into which the pool threw a shifty leaden brightness, the two stared at each other for a moment.  Then the man rose to his feet and smiled.  Sheila noticed that he had been bathing a bloody wrist round which he was now wrapping clumsily a handkerchief.

“Don’t be frightened,” he said in a rather uncertain voice; “I’m not near so desperate as I look.  Do you want a drink?  Hand me down your cup if you have one and I’ll fill it for you.”

“I’m not afraid now,” Sheila quavered, and drew a big breath.  “But I was startled for a minute.  I haven’t any cup.  I—­I suppose, in a way—­I ’m lost.”

He was peering at her now, and when she took off her hat and rubbed her damp forehead with a weary, worried gesture, he gave a little exclamation and swung himself across the stream by a branch, and up to her side on the rock.

“The barmaid!” he said.  “And I was coming to see you!”

Sheila laughed in the relieved surprise of recognition.  “Why, you are the cowboy—­the one that fought so—­so terribly.  Have you been fighting again?  Your wrist is hurt.  May I tie it up for you?”

He held out his arm silently and she tied the handkerchief—­a large, clean, coarse one—­neatly about it.  What with weariness and the shock of her fright, her fingers were not very steady.  He looked down at her during the operation with a contented expression.  It seemed that the moment was filled for him with satisfaction to a complete forgetfulness of past or present annoyances.

“This is a big piece of luck for me,” he said.  “But”—­with a sudden thundery change of countenance—­“you’re not going over to Hidden Creek, are you?”

“I’m trying to go there,” said Sheila; “I’ve been trying ever since five o’clock this morning.  But I don’t seem to be getting there very fast.  I wanted to make Rusty before dark.  And my pony got away from me and went back.  I know he went back because I saw the marks of his feet and he would have gone back.  Wouldn’t he?  Do you think I could get to Rusty on foot to-night?”

“No, ma’am.  I know you couldn’t.  You could make it easy on horseback, though.”  He stared meditatively above her head and then said in a tone of resignation:  “I believe I better go back myself.  I’ll take you.”