When he had moved the sticks inward upon their common focus and the flame was growing brighter and hotter, he frowned at a canvas water-bag pendent from a splinter of rock; thoughtfully eyed the girl’s inflamed ankle and gashed arm; glanced at a small coffee-pot at the edge of the blaze, and ran a hand through his light hair. Then his face brightened. Rising, he rummaged in a small bag of waterproof fabric, from which he produced two flat tins of tobacco.

“Have to economize on water,” he said. “All I own is in that cloth bucket, and the spring’s a deuce of a distance down. Between bathing your arm and making coffee and fixing your ankle—well, I just can’t cook that ankle as it should be done. But I can draw out most of the soreness with a tobacco poultice. That’s what we’ll have to do.”

She eyed the two tins in his hand.

“Is that all the tobacco you’ve got?”

“Why, yes. But it’s enough to do the trick.”

“Then what’ll you smoke? There ain’t any stores here.”

“Then I don’t smoke for awhile,” was the matter-of-fact reply.

Dropping the cans beside her, he strode over to the lantern and brought it and the gun to the overhanging wall. Swiftly then he put coffee to boil, dipped a cupful[30] of water from the canvas bag, flipped a clean white handkerchief from the ditty-bag, and returned to her. Without a word she let him inspect the lacerated arm.

[30]

“You got a nasty rip,” he stated, scowling. “Right along the bone. How did you do it? Fall?”

“Yes.” Her tone was more gentle now than it had yet been, and her eyes dwelt on the sober face bending over the injury. “I’ve—I’ve got a little secret up here—a hole into the rocks that’s been my playhouse since I was little, and when mom’s awful mean or pop’s ugly drunk or—or I can’t stand it down there, I come up here and stay all by my own self. This time I got to dreamin’, I guess, and I went to sleep there. And when I woke up it was night. Mebbe I’d ought to have stayed there till mornin’, but I was awful hungry, and I tried to git down the rocks and took a fall.”

He nodded sympathetically, bathing the wound with gentle touch.

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