"Happy to meet you, Miss Sanderson," he told her jauntily.

His revolver slid into its holster, and his hat came off in a low bow.
White, even teeth gleamed in a sardonic smile.

"So you are a--rustler," she told him scornfully.

"I hate to contradict a lady," he came back, with a kind of bitter
irony.

She saw something else, a deepening stain that soaked slowly down his
shirt sleeve.

"You are wounded."

"Am I?"

"Aren't you?"

"Come to think of it, I believe I am," he laughed shortly.

"Badly?"

"I haven't got the doctor's report yet." There was a gleam of whimsical
gayety in his eyes as he added: "I was going to find him when I had the
good luck to meet up with you."

He was a hunted miscreant, wounded, riding for his life as a hurt wolf
dodges to shake off the pursuit, but strangely enough her gallant heart