“That was a terrible revenge to take on me for baking them.”

“It seems you had your sheep with you—­ the one you stole, and you and it were being pelted all over.”

“Did you see a lady hold-up among those shooting at me?” he inquired anxiously.

She shook her head.  “And just when the biscuits were flying thickest the wall opened and Mr. Fraser appeared.  He caught you and the sheep by the back of your necks, and flung you in.  Then the wall closed, and I awoke.”

“That’s about as near the facts as dreams usually get.”

He was very much pleased, for it would have been a great disappointment to him if she had admitted dreaming about him for any reason except to make fun of him.  The thing about her that touched his imagination most was something wild and untamed, some quality of silken strength in her slim supple youth that scoffed at all men and knew none as master.  He meant to wrest from her if he could an interest that would set him apart in her mind from all others, but he wanted the price of victory to cost him something.  Thus the value of it would be enhanced.

“But tell me about your escape—­ all about it and what became of Lieutenant Fraser.  And first of all, who the lady was that opened the door for you,” she demanded.

“She was his sister.”

“Oh!  His sister.”  Her voice was colorless.  She observed him without appearing to do so.  “Very pretty, I thought her.  Didn’t you?”

“Right nice looking.  Had a sort of an expression made a man want to look at her again.”

“Yes.”

Innocently unaware that he was being pumped, he contributed more information.  “And that game.”

“She was splendid.  I can see her now opening the door in the face of the bullets.”

“Never a scream out of her either.  Just as cool.”

“That is the quality men admire most, isn’t it—­ courage?”

“I don’t reckon that would come first.  Course it wouldn’t make a hit with a man to have a woman puling around all the time.”

“My kind, you mean.”

Though she was smiling at him with her lips, it came to him that his words were being warped to a wrong meaning.

“No, I don’t,” he retorted bluntly.

“As I remember it, I was bawling every chance I got yesterday and the day before,” she recalled, with fine contempt of herself.

“Oh, well!  You had reason a-plenty.  And sometimes a woman cries just like a man cusses.  It don’t mean anything.  I once knew a woman wet her handkerchief to a sop crying because her husband forgot one mo’ning to kiss her good-by.  She quit irrigating to run into a burning house after a neighbor’s kids.”

“I accept your apology for my behavior if you’ll promise I won’t do it again,” she laughed.  “But tell me more about Miss Fraser.  Does she live here?”

For a moment he was puzzled.  “Miss Fraser!  Oh!  She gave up that name several years ago.  Mrs. Collins they call her.  And say, you ought to see her kiddies.  You’d fall in love with them sure.”