She made no reply, but watched him steadily as he opened her blouse and untied the bandage.  His strong fingers trembled a little as he removed it.  If the wounds had reopened!  A chill struck him as he saw the angry red bullet-mark, and a tiny stream of blood winding from it down her white breast.  Very carefully he lifted her to see that the wound in her back had closed perfectly.  Then he washed the blood from her breast, bathed the wound, and left it unbandaged, open to the air.

Her eyes thanked him.

“Listen,” he said, earnestly.  “I’ve had some wounds, and I’ve seen many.  I know a little about them.  The hole in your back has closed.  If you lie still three days the one in your breast will close and you’ll be safe.  The danger from hemorrhage will be over.”

He had spoken with earnest sincerity, almost eagerness.

“Why—­do you—­want me—­to get well?” she asked, wonderingly.

The simple question seemed unanswerable except on grounds of humanity.  But the circumstances under which he had shot this strange girl, the shock and realization, the waiting for death, the hope, had resulted in a condition of mind wherein Venters wanted her to live more than he had ever wanted anything.  Yet he could not tell why.  He believed the killing of the rustler and the subsequent excitement had disturbed him.  For how else could he explain the throbbing of his brain, the heat of his blood, the undefined sense of full hours, charged, vibrant with pulsating mystery where once they had dragged in loneliness?

“I shot you,” he said, slowly, “and I want you to get well so I shall not have killed a woman.  But—­for your own sake, too—­”

A terrible bitterness darkened her eyes, and her lips quivered.

“Hush,” said Venters.  “You’ve talked too much already.”

In her unutterable bitterness he saw a darkness of mood that could not have been caused by her present weak and feverish state.  She hated the life she had led, that she probably had been compelled to lead.  She had suffered some unforgivable wrong at the hands of Oldring.  With that conviction Venters felt a shame throughout his body, and it marked the rekindling of fierce anger and ruthlessness.  In the past long year he had nursed resentment.  He had hated the wilderness—­the loneliness of the uplands.  He had waited for something to come to pass.  It had come.  Like an Indian stealing horses he had skulked into the recesses of the canyons.  He had found Oldring’s retreat; he had killed a rustler; he had shot an unfortunate girl, then had saved her from this unwitting act, and he meant to save her from the consequent wasting of blood, from fever and weakness.  Starvation he had to fight for her and for himself.  Where he had been sick at the letting of blood, now he remembered it in grim, cold calm.  And as he lost that softness of nature, so he lost his fear of men.  He would watch for Oldring, biding his time, and he would kill this great black-bearded rustler who had held a girl in bondage, who had used her to his infamous ends.