“Thar!  I knew it was suthin’,” she began aloud, but the words somehow died upon her lips.  Then she turned and walked towards the inner door, wherein her husband had disappeared,—­but here stopped again irresolutely.  Then she suddenly walked through the outer door into the road and made directly for the spring.  The figure of a man crouching, covered with dust, half rose from the bushes when she reached them.  She was not frightened, for he seemed utterly exhausted, and there was a singular mixture of shame, hesitation, and entreaty in his broken voice as he gasped out:—­

“Look here!—­I say! hide me somewhere, won’t you?  Just for a little.  You see—­the fact is—­I’m chased!  They’re hunting me now,—­they’re just behind me.  Anywhere will do till they go by!  Tell you all about it another time.  Quick!  Please do!”

In all this there was nothing dramatic nor even startling to her.  Nor did there seem to be any present danger impending to the man.  He did not look like a horse-thief nor a criminal.  And he had tried to laugh, half-apologetically, half-bitterly,—­the consciousness of a man who had to ask help of a woman at such a moment.

She gave a quick glance towards the house.  He followed her eyes, and said hurriedly:  “Don’t tell on me.  Don’t let any one see me.  I’m trusting you.

“Come,” she said suddenly.  “Get on this side.”

He understood her, and slipped to her side, half-creeping, half-crouching like a dog behind her skirts, but keeping her figure between him and the house as she moved deliberately towards the barn, scarce fifty yards away.  When she reached it she opened the half-door quickly, said:  “In there—­at the top—­among the hay”—­closed it, and was turning away, when there came a faint rapping from within.  She opened the door again impatiently; the man said hastily:  “Wanted to tell you—­it was a man who insulted a woman!  I went for him, you see—­and”—­

But she shut the door sharply.  The fugitive had made a blunder.  The importation of her own uncertain sex into the explanation did not help him.  She kept on towards the house, however, without the least trace of excitement or agitation in her manner, entered the front door again, walked quietly to the door of the inner room, glanced in, saw that her husband was absorbed in splicing a riata, and had evidently not missed her, and returned quietly to her dish-washing.  With this singular difference:  a few moments before she had seemed inattentive and careless of what she was doing, as if from some abstraction; now, when she was actually abstracted, her movements were mechanically perfect and deliberate.  She carefully held up a dish and examined it minutely for cracks, rubbing it cautiously with the towel, but seeing all the while only the man she had left in the barn.  A few moments elapsed.  Then there came another rush of wind around the house, a drifting cloud of dust before the door, the clatter of hoofs, and a quick shout.