"Is he--"

"Yes, he's the nicest kind of a boy."

"How old is he!"

"Twenty-eight."

Donna was thoughtful.

"Nice disparity in ages, don't you think, Miss Donna?"

Donna blushed again. "What is his business!" she asked.

"Well, that's a right hard question to answer, Miss Donna. He was a lawyer once for about a month, after he got out o' college, an' then he worked on a newspaper. After that, just to prove he was a human bein', he got the notion that there was money in the chicken business. Well, he got out o' the chicken business with a couple o' hundred dollars, an' then he come breezin' into a minin' camp one day an' tried bustin'

a faro bank. Failed agin. I'm responsible for that failure, though. The next I see of him is a year later, in McKittrick, where he's runnin' a real estate office an' dealin' in oil lands. But somehow there never was no oil on none o' the land that Bob tied up, so he got plumb disgusted an' quit. He was thinkin' o' tourin' the country districts sellin'

little pieces o' bluestone to put in the bowls of kerosene lamps to keep 'em from explodin', when I see him next. He borrowed fifty dollars from me--which he ain't paid back yet, come to think on't--an' went to Nevada minin' an' just at present he's about settled into his regular legitimate business. He was headed that way from birth. I could read the signs."

"What is his present profession?"

"He's an Inspector o' Landscapes."

"You're wrong. He's not a Desert Rat."

"He is. I can prove it."

"He's too young. They don't begin to 'rat' until they're close to forty.

I could name you a dozen, and the youngest is thirty-eight."

"Oh, you're thinkin' o' the ordinary, garden variety. But I tell you this McGraw man's a Desert Rat. The desert's got him. Generally it don't get 'em so young, but once in a while it does, An' of all the Desert Rats that ever sucked a n.i.g.g.e.rhead cactus, the feller that goes huntin'

lost mines is the worst. They never get over it."

Donna permitted herself a very small smile.

"Sometimes they do" she reminded him.

"I wouldn't be surprised. But not until they've found what they're lookin' for. However, we'll wait an' see if Bob McGraw--like that name, Miss Donna?"

"I love it."

"We'll wait an' see if he pulls through this, an' then we'll find out if he can be cured o' desert-rattin'. In the meantime I'll wait here until Doc gets back. I ain't one of the presumin' kind, but I think I'd better stay. An' you--I think you'd better go in an' have another good look at this Desert Rat o' yours. He's breathin' like the north wind sighin'

through a knot-hole."

He watched her disappear.

"For the sight o' a good woman, O Lord, we thank Thee," he murmured, "an' for the sight o' a good woman with grit, we thank Thee some more.

Great grief, why wasn't I born good an' good-lookin' 'stead o' fat an'

no account?"

At ten o'clock Doc Taylor returned to the Hat Ranch and found the condition of his patient unchanged. He was still unconscious and his loud, stertorous breathing, coupled with the ghastly exhaust of air through the hole on his breast, testified to the seriousness of his condition. Throughout the night Donna sat by the bedside watching him, while the doctor remained in the kitchen with Mr. Hennage.

Toward morning Bob McGraw opened his eyes and looked at Donna very wonderingly. Then his glance wandered around the room and back to the girl. He was plainly puzzled.

"Where's my horse," he whispered, "and my spurs and my gun and hat?"

Donna bent over him and placed two cool fingers on his lips.

"The hemorrhage has stopped," she warned him, "and you mustn't speak or move, or you may bring it on again."

"I remember--now. I fired--low--and he--got me. Where's Friar Tuck?"

"Your horse? He's in the corral at San Pasqual, and your gun is in the kitchen with your spurs, and your hat--why, I guess I forgot to bring your hat with me. But don't worry about it. I'm Donna Corblay of the Hat Ranch, and I'll give you your choice of a hundred hats if you'll only get well."

"Are you--the--girl--that kissed me?"

Donna's voice was very low, her face was very close to his as she answered him. His lean brown hand stole confidingly into hers--for a long time he was silent, content to lie there and know that she was near him.

Presently he looked up at her again, with the same dominating, wistful entreaty in his brown eyes. She lowered her head until her cheek rested against his, and his arm went upward and around her neck.

"G.o.d--made you--for me" he whispered. "I love you, and my name is Bob McGraw. I guess--I'll--get well."

"Beloved," she breathed, "of course you'll get well. I want you to." She smoothed the wavy auburn hair back from his forehead. "Go to sleep" she commanded. "You can't talk to me any more. I'm going to go to sleep, too."

She drew a bright Mexican serape over her shoulders, sat down in a rocking-chair by the side of the bed and closed her eyes. For what seemed to her a lapse of hours, although in reality it was less than five minutes, she tried to induce a clever counterfeit of sleep, but unable longer to deprive herself of another look at her prize she opened her eyes and gazed at Bob McGraw. To her almost childish delight he was watching her; and then she noticed his little, cheerful, half-mocking smile.

She flushed hotly. For the first time she permitted the searchlight of reason to play on the events of the night, and it occurred to her now that she had been guilty of a monstrous breach of convention, an unprecedented, unmaidenly action. She felt like crying now, with the thought that she had held herself so cheap. Bob McGraw saw the flush and the pallor that followed it. He read the unspoken thought behind the changing rush of color.

"Don't feel--that way--about it" he whispered haltingly. "It's unusual--but then--you and I are unusual, too. There seems to be--perfect--understanding, and between a--man and a woman that means--perfect peace. It had to--be. It was preordained--our meeting.

What is--your name?"

Donna again told him.

"Nice--name. Like it."

He closed his eyes and dropped off to sleep like a tired boy.

CHAPTER VI

Donna sat there until sunrise, rocking back and forth, striving to weave an orderly pattern of reason out of the tangle of unreason in which she found herself when, confronted by that look in Bob McGraw's brown eyes.

She failed. She could not think calmly. She was conscious of but one supreme emotion as she gazed at this man who had ridden into her life, gun in hand. She was happy. Heretofore her life had been quiet, even, unemotional, always the same--and now she was happy, riotously, deliriously happy; and it did not occur to her that Bob McGraw might die. She willed that he should live, for life was love, and love--what was love? Something that surged, a wave of exquisite tenderness, through Donna's lonely heart, something that throbbed in the untouched recesses of her womanhood, arousing in her a fierce, almost primitive desire to possess this man, to fondle his auburn head, to caress him, to work for him, slave for him, to show her grat.i.tude and adoration by living for him, and--if need be--by dying for him!

It occurred to her presently that there was nothing so very unmaidenly in her action, after all. She felt no distinct loss of womanly reserve--no crumbling of the foundations of dignity. She still had those attributes; to-morrow, when she returned to the cashier's counter at the eating-house, she would still have these defensive weapons against the invasions of the sensual, smirking, patronizing male brutes with which every pa.s.sing train appeared to be filled; the well-dressed, hard-finished city men, who held her cheap because she presided behind an eating-house cash-register. How well she knew their quick, bold stares, their so clumsy subterfuges to enter into conversation with her; and how different was Bob McGraw to such as they!

Here at last was the reason, unseen and unrecognized at first, manifesting itself merely in the spontaneous and unconscious shattering of her maidenly reserve, but distinctly visible now. It was not that Bob McGraw had come to her out of the desert at a time when she needed him most; it was not that he came in all the bravery and generous sacrifice of youth, shedding his blood that she might not shed tears; it was not the service he had rendered her that made her love him, for San Pasqual was "long" on mere animal courage. It was the adoration that gleamed in his eyes--an adoring stare, revealing respect behind his love--that one quality without which love is a dead and withered thing.

She knew him now--the man he was. She saw the priceless pearl of character he possessed. Bob McGraw was a wild, reckless, unthinking, impulsive fellow, perhaps, but for all that he was the sort of man at whose feet women, both good and bad, have laid their hearts since the world began. He was kind. Harley P. Hennage was right. Bob McGraw was a Desert Rat. But a Desert Rat lives close to the great heart of Mother Nature, and his own heart is clean.