“I’ve done more than pack in that beef,” he said.  “For five nights I’ve been working while you slept.  I’ve got eight calves corralled near a ravine.  Eight calves, all alive and doing fine!”

“You went five nights!”

All that Venters could make of the dilation of her eyes, her slow pallor, and her exclamation, was fear—­fear for herself or for him.

“Yes.  I didn’t tell you, because I knew you were afraid to be left alone.”

“Alone?” She echoed his word, but the meaning of it was nothing to her.  She had not even thought of being left alone.  It was not, then, fear for herself, but for him.  This girl, always slow of speech and action, now seemed almost stupid.  She put forth a hand that might have indicated the groping of her mind.  Suddenly she stepped swiftly to him, with a look and touch that drove from him any doubt of her quick intelligence or feeling.

“Oldring has men watch the herds—­they would kill you.  You must never go again!”

When she had spoken, the strength and the blaze of her died, and she swayed toward Venters.

“Bess, I’ll not go again,” he said, catching her.

She leaned against him, and her body was limp and vibrated to a long, wavering tremble.  Her face was upturned to his.  Woman’s face, woman’s eyes, woman’s lips—­all acutely and blindly and sweetly and terribly truthful in their betrayal!  But as her fear was instinctive, so was her clinging to this one and only friend.

Venters gently put her from him and steadied her upon her feet; and all the while his blood raced wild, and a thrilling tingle unsteadied his nerve, and something—­that he had seen and felt in her—­that he could not understand—­seemed very close to him, warm and rich as a fragrant breath, sweet as nothing had ever before been sweet to him.

With all his will Venters strove for calmness and thought and judgment unbiased by pity, and reality unswayed by sentiment.  Bess’s eyes were still fixed upon him with all her soul bright in that wistful light.  Swiftly, resolutely he put out of mind all of her life except what had been spent with him.  He scorned himself for the intelligence that made him still doubt.  He meant to judge her as she had judged him.  He was face to face with the inevitableness of life itself.  He saw destiny in the dark, straight path of her wonderful eyes.  Here was the simplicity, the sweetness of a girl contending with new and strange and enthralling emotions here the living truth of innocence; here the blind terror of a woman confronted with the thought of death to her savior and protector.  All this Venters saw, but, besides, there was in Bess’s eyes a slow-dawning consciousness that seemed about to break out in glorious radiance.

“Bess, are you thinking?” he asked.

“Yes—­oh yes!”

“Do you realize we are here alone—­man and woman?”

“Yes.”

“Have you thought that we may make our way out to civilization, or we may have to stay here—­alone—­hidden from the world all our lives?”