He pondered a while before he asked quietly: 

“Ain’t you going to ride, Miss Kinney?”

“No, I’m not.  Better go on.  Pray don’t let me detain you.”

“All right.  See that peak with the spur to it?  Well, you keep that directly in line and make straight for it.  I’ll say good-by now, ma’am.  I got to hurry to be in time for dinner.  I’ll send some one out from the camp to meet you that ain’t such a villain as I am.”

He swung to the saddle, put spurs to his pony, and cantered away.  She could scarce believe it, even when he rode straight over the hill without a backward glance.  He would never leave her.  Surely he would not do that.  She could never reach the camp, and he knew it.  To be left alone in the desert again; the horror of it broke her down, but not immediately.  She went proudly forward with her head in the air at first.  He might look round.  Perhaps he was peeping at her from behind some cholla.  She would not gratify him by showing any interest in his whereabouts.  But presently she began to lag, to scan draws and mesas anxiously for him, even to call aloud in an ineffective little voice which the empty hills echoed faintly.  But from him there came no answer.

She sat down and wept in self-pity.  Of course she had told him to go, but he knew well enough she did not mean it.  A magnanimous man would have taken a better revenge on an exhausted girl than to leave her alone in such a spot, and after she had endured such a terrible experience as she had.  She had read about the chivalry of Western men.  Yet these two had ridden away on their horses and left her to live or die as chance willed it.

“Now, don’t you feel so bad, Miss Margaret.  I wasn’t aiming really to leave you, of course,” a voice interrupted her sobs to say.

She looked through the laced fingers that covered her face, mightily relieved, but not yet willing to confess it.  The engineer had made a circuit and stolen up quietly behind.

“Oh!  I thought you had gone,” she said as carelessly as she could with a voice not clear of tears.

“Were you crying because you were afraid I hadn’t?” he asked.

“I ran a cactus into my foot.  And I didn’t say anything about crying.”

“Then if your foot is hurt you will want to ride.  That seventeen miles might be too long a stroll before you get through with it.”

“I don’t know what I’ll do yet,” she answered shortly.

“I know what you’ll do.”

“Yes?”

“You’ll quit your foolishness and get on this hawss.”

She flushed angrily.  “I won’t!”

He stooped down, gathered her up in his arms, and lifted her to the saddle.

“That’s what you’re going to do whether you like it or not,” he informed her.

“How are you going to make me stay here, now you have put me here?”

“I’m going to get on behind and hold you if it’s necessary.”