understand her fears.

"The scoundrel!" he muttered, looking at the delicate features and clear,
lovely profile of the girl. He felt a strong desire to throttle the evil
man.

He asked a good many questions about her life, and was filled with wonder
over the flower-like girl who seemed to have blossomed in the wilderness
with no hand to cultivate her save a lazy, clever, drunken father, and a
kind but ignorant mother. How could she have escaped being coarsened amid
such surroundings. How was it, with such brothers as she had, that she had
come forth as lovely and unhurt as she seemed? He somehow began to feel a
great anxiety for her lonely future and a desire to put her in the way of
protection. But at present they were still in the wilderness; and he began
to be glad that he was here too, and might have the privilege of
protecting her now, if there should be need.

As it grew toward evening, they came upon a little grassy spot in a coulee
where the horses might rest and eat. Here they stopped, and the girl threw
herself under a shelter of trees, with the old coat for a pillow, and
rested, while the man paced up and down at a distance, gathering wood for
a fire, and watching the horizon. As night came on, the city-bred man
longed for shelter. He was by no means a coward where known quantities
were concerned, but to face wild animals and drunken brigands in a
strange, wild plain with no help near was anything but an enlivening
prospect. He could not understand why they had not come upon some human
habitation by this time. He had never realized how vast this country was
before. When he came westward on the train he did not remember to have
traversed such long stretches of country without a sign of civilization,
though of course a train went so much faster than a horse that he had no