His red head sailed through the air and landed in the white sand at the girl's feet. For a moment he sat in the road and gazed with chagrin after the vanishing heels of his mount. Then his wrathful eyes came round to the owner of the machine that had caused the eruption. His mouth had opened to give adequate expression to his feelings, when he discovered anew the forgotten fact that he was dealing with a woman. His jaw hung open for an instant in amaze; and when he remembered the unedited vocabulary he had turned loose on the world a flood of purple swept his tanned face.
She wanted to laugh, but wisely refrained. “I'm very sorry,” was what she said.
He stared in silence as he slowly picked himself from the ground. His red hair rose like the quills of a porcupine above a face that had the appearance of being unfinished. Neither nose nor mouth nor chin seemed to be quite definite enough.
She choked down her gayety and offered renewed apologies.
“I was going for a doc,” he explained, by way of opening his share of the conversation.
“Then perhaps you had better jump in with me and ride back to the Lazy D. I suppose that's where you came from?”
He scratched his vivid head helplessly. “Yes, ma'am.”
“Then jump in.”
“I was going to Bear Creek, ma'am,” he added dubiously.
“How far is it?”
“'Bout twenty-five miles, and then some.”
“You don't expect to walk, do you?”
“No; I allowed—”
“I'll take you back to the ranch, where you can get another horse.”
“I reckon, ma'am, I'd ruther walk.”
“Nonsense! Why?”
“I ain't used to them gas wagons.”
“It's quite safe. There is nothing to be afraid of.”
Reluctantly he got in beside her, as happy as a calf in a branding pen.
“Are you the lady that sashaid off with Ned Bannister?” he asked presently, after he had had time to smother successively some of his fear, wonder and delight at their smooth, swift progress.
“Yes. Why?”
“The boys allow you hadn't oughter have done it.” Then, to place the responsibility properly on shoulders broader than his own, he added: “That's what Judd says.”
“And who is Judd?”
“Judd, he's the foreman of the Lazy D.”
Below them appeared the corrals and houses of a ranch nestling in a little valley flanked by hills.
“This yere's the Lazy D,” announced the youth, with pride, and in the spirit of friendliness suggested a caution. “Judd, he's some peppery. You wanter smooth him down some, seeing as he's riled up to-day.”
A flicker of steel came into the blue eyes. “Indeed! Well, here we are.”
“If it ain't Reddy, AND the lady with the flying machine,” murmured a freckled youth named McWilliams, emerging from the bunkhouse with a pan of water which had been used to bathe the wound of one of the punctured combatants.
“What's that?” snapped a voice from within; and immediately its owner appeared in the doorway and bored with narrowed black eyes the young woman in the machine.
“Who are you?” he demanded, brusquely.
“Your target,” she answered, quietly. “Would you like to take another shot at me?”
The freckled lad broke out into a gurgle of laughter, at which the black, swarthy man beside him wheeled round in a rage. “What you cacklin' at, Mac?” he demanded, in a low voice.
“Oh, the things I notice,” returned that youth jauntily, meeting the other's anger without the flicker of an eyelid.
“It ain't healthy to be so noticin',” insinuated the other.
“Y'u don't say,” came the prompt, sarcastic retort. “If you're such a darned good judge of health, y'u better be attending to some of your patients.” He jerked a casual thumb over his shoulder toward the bunks on which lay the wounded men.
“I shouldn't wonder but what there might be another patient for me to attend to,” snarled the foreman.
“That so? Well, turn your wolf loose when y'u get to feelin' real devilish,” jeered the undismayed one, strolling forward to assist Miss Messiter to alight.
The mistress of the Lazy D had been aware of the byplay, but she had caught neither the words nor their import. She took the offered brown hand smilingly, for here again she looked into the frank eyes of the West, unafraid and steady. She judged him not more than twenty-two, but the school where he had learned of life had held open and strenuous session every day since he could remember.
“Glad to meet y'u, ma'am,” he assured her, in the current phrase of the semi-arid lands.
“I'm sure I am glad to meet YOU,” she answered, heartily. “Can you tell me where is the foreman of the Lazy D?”
He introduced with a smile the swarthy man in the doorway. “This is him ma'am—Mr. Judd Morgan.”
Now it happened that Mr. Judd Morgan was simmering with suppressed spleen.
“All I've got to say is that you had no business mixing up in that shootin' affair back there. Perhaps you don't know that the man you saved is Ned Bannister, the outlaw,” was his surly greeting.
“Oh, yes, I know that.”
“Then what d'ye mean—Who are you, anyway?” His insolent eyes coasted malevolently over her.
“Helen Messiter is my name.”
It was ludicrous to see the change that came over the man. He had been prepared to bully her; and with a word she had pricked the bubble of his arrogance. He swallowed his anger and got a mechanical smile in working order.
“Glad to see you here, Miss Messiter,” he said, his sinister gaze attempting to meet hers frankly “I been looking for you every day.”
“But y'u managed to surprise him, after all ma'am,” chuckled Mac.
“Where's yo' hawss, Reddy?” inquired a tall young man, who had appeared silently in the doorway of the bunkhouse.
Reddy pinked violently. “I had an accident, Denver,” he explained. “This lady yere she—”
“Scooped y'u right off yore hawss. Y'u don't say,” sympathized Mac so breathlessly that even Reddy joined in the chorus of laughter that went up at his expense.
The young woman thought to make it easy for him, and suggested an explanation.
“His horse isn't used to automobiles, and so when it met this one—”
“I got off,” interposed Reddy hastily, displaying a complexion like a boiled beet.
“He got off,” Mac explained gravely to the increasing audience.
Denver nodded with an imperturbable face. “He got off.”
Mac introduced Miss Messiter to such of her employees as were on hand. “Shake hands with Miss Messiter, Missou,” was the formula, the name alone varying to suit the embarrassed gentlemen in leathers. Each of them in turn presented a huge hand, in which her little one disappeared for the time, and was sawed up and down in the air like a pump-handle. Yet if she was amused she did not show it; and her pleasure at meeting the simple, elemental products of the plains outweighed a great deal her sense of the ludicrous.
“How are your patients getting along?” she presently asked of her foreman.
“I reckon