"Spilt, too; but not hurt, eh?"

"No, neither of us. I went over with the buggy when the wheel cramped,
but SHE jumped clear."

He made a gesture indicating the presence of another. The man turned
quickly. There was a second figure, a young girl standing beside the
grain from which he had emerged, embracing a few stalks of wheat with
one arm and a hand in which she still held her parasol, while she
grasped her gathered skirts with the other, and trying to find a secure
foothold for her two neat narrow slippers on a crumbling cake of adobe
above the fathomless dust of the roadway. Her face, although annoyed
and discontented, was pretty, and her light dress and slim figure were
suggestive of a certain superior condition.

The man's manner at once softened with Western courtesy. He swung
his broad-brimmed hat from his head, and bent his body with the
ceremoniousness of the country ball-room. "I reckon the lady had better
come up to the shanty out o' the dust and sun till we kin help you get
these things fixed," he said to the driver. "I'll send round by the road
for your hoss, and have one of mine fetch up your wagon."

"Is it far?" asked the girl, slightly acknowledging his salutation,
without waiting for her companion to reply.

"Only a step this way," he answered, motioning to the field of wheat
beside her.

"What in THERE? I never could go in there," she said, decidedly.