In one jerk Barton raised himself to a sitting posture.

"You 'shot up' a couple of men?" he demanded peremptorily.

Through the crook of a mud-smeared elbow shoving back the sodden brim
of her hat, the girl glanced toward him like a vaguely perplexed
little ragamuffin. "It was--messy," she admitted softly. Out from her
snarl of storm-blown hair, tattered, battered by wind and rain, she
peered up suddenly with her first frowning sign of self-consciousness.
"If there's one thing in the world that I regret," she faltered
deprecatingly, "it's a--it's--an untidy fight."

Altogether violently Barton burst out laughing. There was no mirth in
the laugh, but just noise. "Oh, let's go home!" he suggested
hysterically.

"Home?" faltered little Eve Edgarton. With a sluggish sort of defiance
she reached out and gathered the big wet scrap-book to her breast.
"Why, Mr. Barton," she said, "we couldn't get home now in all this
storm and darkness and wash-out--to save our lives. But even if it
were moonlight," she singsonged, "and starlight--and high-noon; even
if there were--chariots--at the door, I'm not going home--now--till
I've finished my scrap-book--if it takes a week."

"Eh?" jerked Barton. "What?" Laboriously he edged himself forward. For
five hours now of reckless riding, of storm and privation, through
death and disaster, the girl had clung tenaciously to her books and
papers. What in creation was in them? "For Heaven's sake--Miss
Edgarton--" he began.