“I shouldn’t be reading in this light, anyway,” she said.  “I hadn’t noticed that the sun was down.  It is good to be what you call free again, isn’t it?”

He laughed softly, put back his head, filled his lungs.  Then he came on to her and stood leaning against the wall, his hat cocked to one side to hide the bandage.

“The world is good,” he announced with gay positiveness.  “Especially when you’ve been away from it for a spell and weren’t quite sure what was next.  And especially, too, when you’ve had time to think.  Did you ever take off a week and just do nothing but think?”

“One doesn’t have time for that sort of thing as a rule,” she admitted.  “There’s a chair standing empty if you care to let me in on your deductions.”

“I don’t want to sit down or lie down until I’m ready to drop,” he grinned down at her.  “A bed makes me sick at my stomach and a chair is pretty nearly as bad.  I’d like almighty well to get a horse between my knees . . . and ride!  Suppose I’d fall to pieces if I tried it right now?”

“Sure of it.  And not so sure that you haven’t discharged your keeper prematurely.  You mustn’t think of such things.”

“There you go.  Forbidding me to think again! . . .  Believe I will sit down; would you believe that a full-grown man like me could get as weak as a cat this quick?”

He took the chair just beyond her, tilted it back against the wall, his booted heels caught under its elevated legs, and glanced away from her to the colorful sky above San Juan’s scattered houses in the west.

“Yes, sir,” he continued his train of thought, “I’d like a horse between my knees; I’d like to ride out yonder into the sunset, to meet the night as it comes down; I’d like the feeling of nothing but the stars over me instead of the smothery roof of a house.  Doesn’t it appeal to you, too?”

“Yes,” she said.

“You on Persis, with me on my big roan, riding not as we rode that other night, but just for the fun of it.  I’d like to ride like the devil. . . .  You don’t mind my saying what I mean, do you? . . . to go scooting across the sage-brush letting out a yell at every jump, boring holes in the night with my gun, making all of the racket and dust that one man can make.  Ever feel that way? just like getting outside and making a noise?  Let me talk!  I’m the one who has been shut up for so long my tongue has started to grow fast to the roof of my mouth.  At first I could do nothing but lie flat on my back in a sort of fog, seeing nothing clearly, thinking not at all.  Then came the hours in which I could do nothing but think, under orders to keep still.  Think?  Why, I thought about everything that ever happened, most things that might happen, and a whole lot that never will.  Now comes the third stage; I can talk better than I can walk. . . .  Do you mind listening while a man raves?”

“Not in the least.”  She found his mood contagious and, smiling in that quick, bright way natural to her, showed for a moment the twin dimples of which together with a host of other things he had had ample time to think during his bedroom imprisonment.  “Please rave on.”