“Oh.”  The girl waited.  “It seems to me you need help yourself.  I don’t see how you expect to help any one else, with your horse in that condition,” she added.  And when he still did not speak, she asked:  “Do you know how far it is to the nearest ranch?”

“No.  I told you I’m a stranger in this country.  I was heading for the Double Cross, but I don’t know just—­”

“We’re eight miles, straight across, from there; ten, the way we would have to go to get there.  There are other washouts in this country—­which it is unwise to attempt jumping, Mr.—­”

“Campbell,” Ford supplied shortly.

“I beg your pardon?  You mumbled—­”

“Campbell!” Ford was tempted to shout it but contented himself with a tart distinctness.  A late, untoward incident had made him somewhat touchy over his name, and he had not mumbled.

“Oh.  Did you skin your face and blacken your eye, Mr. Campbell, when you tried to jump that washout?”

“No.”  Ford did not offer any explanation.  He remembered the scars of battle which were still plainly visible upon his countenance, and he turned red while he bent over the fore ankles of Rambler, trying to discover other sprains.  He felt that he was going to dislike this girl very much before he succeeded in getting her to shelter.  He could not remember ever meeting before a woman under forty with so unpleasant a manner and with such a talent for disagreeable utterances.

“Then you must have been fighting a wildcat,” she hazarded.

“Pardon me; is this a Methodist experience meeting?” he retorted, looking full at her with lowering brows.  “It seems to me the only subject which concerns us mutually is the problem of getting to a ranch before dark.”

“You’ll have to solve it yourself.  I never attempt puzzles.”  The girl, somewhat to his surprise, showed no resentment at his rebuff.  Indeed, he began to suspect her of being secretly amused.  He began also mentally to accuse her of not being too badly hurt to walk, if she wanted to; indeed, his skepticism went so far as to accuse her of deliberately baiting him—­though why, he did not try to conjecture.  Women were queer.  Witness his own late experience with one.

Being thus in a finely soured mood, Ford suggested that, as she no doubt knew the shortest way to the nearest ranch, they at least make a start in that direction.

“How?” asked the girl, staring up at him from where she sat beside the rose bushes.

“By walking, I suppose—­unless you expect me to carry you.”  Ford’s tone was not in any degree affable.

“I fancy it would be asking too great a favor to suggest that you catch my horse for me?”

Ford dropped Rambler’s reins and turned to her, irritated to the point where he felt a distinct desire to shake her.

“I’d far rather catch your horse, even if I had to haze him all over the country, than carry you,” he stated bluntly.