“I came to-day,” she explained in the same matter-of-fact way.  “Consequently you will pardon the looks of things.  But I am one of the kind that believes in hanging out a shingle first, getting details arranged next.  Now may I see the hand?”

“It’s hardly anything.”  He lifted it now for her inspection.  “Just a slight cut, you know.  But it’s showing signs of infection.  A little antiseptic . . .”

She took his fingers into hers and bent over the wound.  He noted two things, now:  what strong hands she had, shapely, with sensitive fingers ignorant of rings; how richly alive and warmly colored her hair was, full of little waves and curls.

She had nothing to say while she treated him.  Over an alcohol lamp she heated some water; in a bowl, brought from the adjoining room, she cleansed the hand thoroughly.  Then the application of the final antiseptic, a bit of absorbent cotton, a winding of surgeon’s tape about a bit of gauze, and the thing was done.  Only at the end did she say: 

“It’s a peculiar cut . . . not a knife cut, is it?”

“No,” he answered humorously.  “Did it on a piece of lead. . . .  How much is it, Doctor?”

“Two dollars,” she told him, busied with the drying of her own hands.  “Better let me look at it again in the morning if it pains you.”

He laid two silver dollars in her palm, hesitated a moment and then went out.

“She’s got the nerve,” was his thoughtful estimate as he went to his corner table in the dining-room.  “But I don’t believe she is going to last long in San Juan. . . .  Funny she should come to a place like this, anyhow. . . .  Wonder what the V stands for?”

At any rate the hand had been skilfully treated and bandaged; he nodded at it approvingly.  Then, with his meal set before him, he divided his thoughts pretty evenly between the girl and the recent shooting at the Casa Blanca.  The sense was strong upon him as it had been many a time that before very long either Rod Norton or Jim Galloway would lie as the sheepman from Las Palmas was lying, while the other might watch his sunrises and sunsets with a strange, new emotion of security.

The sheriff, who had not eaten for twelve hours, was beginning his meal when the newest stranger in San Juan came into the dining-room.  She had arranged her lustrous copper-brown hair becomingly, and looked fresh and cool and pretty.  Norton approved of her with his keen eyes while he watched her go to her place at a table across the room.  As she sat down, giving no sign of having noted him, her back toward him, he continued to observe and to admire her slender, perfect figure and the strong, sensitive hands busied with her napkin.

A slovenly, half-grown Indian girl, Anita, the cook’s daughter, came in from the kitchen, directed the slumbrous eyes of her race upon the sheriff who fitted well in a woman’s eye, and went to serve the single other late diner.  Norton caught a fleeting view of V. D. Page’s throat and cheek as she turned slightly in speaking with Anita.  As the serving-maid withdrew Norton rose to his feet and crossed the room to the far table.