When he came to himself, there was a curious blending of dream and reality.  He thought his lady was coming to him across the rough plains in an automobile, with gray wings like those of the bird the girl had shot, and his prayer as he knelt in the sand was drawing her, while overhead the air was full of a wild, sweet music from strange birds that mocked and called and trilled.  But, when the automobile reached him and stopped, the lady withered into a little, old, dried-up creature of ashes; and the girl of the plains was sitting in her place radiant and beautiful.

He opened his eyes, and saw the rude little dinner set, and smelt the delicious odor of the roasted bird.  The girl was standing on the other side of the fire, gravely whistling a most extraordinary song, like unto all the birds of the air at once.

She had made a little cake out of the corn-meal, and they feasted royally.

“I caught two fishes in the brook.  We’ll take them along for supper,” she said as they packed the things again for starting.  He tried to get her to take a rest also, and let him watch; but she insisted that they must go on, and promised to rest just before dark.  “For we must travel hard at night, you know,” she added fearfully.

He questioned her more about the man who might be pursuing, and came to understand her fears.

“The scoundrel!” he muttered, looking at the delicate features and clear, lovely profile of the girl.  He felt a strong desire to throttle the evil man.

He asked a good many questions about her life, and was filled with wonder over the flower-like girl who seemed to have blossomed in the wilderness with no hand to cultivate her save a lazy, clever, drunken father, and a kind but ignorant mother.  How could she have escaped being coarsened amid such surroundings.  How was it, with such brothers as she had, that she had come forth as lovely and unhurt as she seemed?  He somehow began to feel a great anxiety for her lonely future and a desire to put her in the way of protection.  But at present they were still in the wilderness; and he began to be glad that he was here too, and might have the privilege of protecting her now, if there should be need.

As it grew toward evening, they came upon a little grassy spot in a coulee where the horses might rest and eat.  Here they stopped, and the girl threw herself under a shelter of trees, with the old coat for a pillow, and rested, while the man paced up and down at a distance, gathering wood for a fire, and watching the horizon.  As night came on, the city-bred man longed for shelter.  He was by no means a coward where known quantities were concerned, but to face wild animals and drunken brigands in a strange, wild plain with no help near was anything but an enlivening prospect.  He could not understand why they had not come upon some human habitation by this time.  He had never realized how vast this country was before.