“Oh, don’t!” she cried, setting the bowl on the floor and gently pushing him back on his pillow; “you must not!”

He laughed.  “Just like a woman.  You surely don’t think I’m going to lie here for a week, like a sick cat, for such a little scratch.  I’ve lost some blood, that’s all.”  And before she could prevent it, he had drawn himself up and was smiling broadly.

“I can’t look after sick folks,” she said, in despair.  “The doctor will blame me.”

“I heard him say if you hadn’t held my cut so well I’d have bled to death.”

“Anybody else could have done it.”

“Nobody else didn’t.”

“Do you want the gruel?  Take it quick, and lie down again; you’ll lose strength sitting up.”

“You’ll have to feed me,” he said, opening his mouth.  “I’m too blamed weak to sit up without propping with my hands, and they don’t seem very good supports.  Look how that one is wobbling.”

She sat down on the edge of the bed, and without a word placed the bowl in her lap and her arm round him.  Then neither spoke as she filled the spoon and held it to his lips.  She felt him trying to steady his arms to keep his weight from her.

“It’s really good,” he said, as she filled the spoon the second time, “I had no idea I was so hungry; you say you made it?”

“Yes; there now, I’ll have to wipe your chin; you ought not to talk when you are eating.”

For several minutes neither spoke.  He finished the bowl of gruel and lay down again.

“I feel as mean as a dog,” he said, as she rose and drew the cover over him; “here I am being nursed by the very fellow’s sweetheart I tried my level best to do up.”

She turned and placed the bowl on the table, and then went to the fire.

“I heard you were his girl last night,” he went on.  “Well, I’m glad I didn’t kill him.  I wouldn’t have tried in anything but self-defence, for even if he did use a gun and knife, when I had none, he’s got bulldog pluck, and plenty of it.  Do you know, I felt like mashing the head of that sheriff for beating him like he did.”

She sat down before the fire, but soon rose again.  “If I stay here,” she said, abruptly, and rather sharply, “you’ll keep talking, and not sleep at all.  I’m going into the next room—­the parlor.  If you want anything, call me and I’ll come.”

A few minutes after she left him he fell asleep.  She put a piece of wood on the fire in the next room and sat down before it.  She had left the door of his room ajar, and a ray of light from his lamp fell across the dark carpet and dimly illuminated the room.  The hours passed slowly.  No one in the house was astir.  No sound came from the outside save the dismal barking of a dog down the road.  She was fatigued and almost asleep, when she was suddenly roused by a far-off shout.

“Whoopee!  Whoopee!”

It seemed to come from the road leading down from the loftiest mountain peak.  She held her breath and listened.