The soft dark eyes faced his bravely for an instant and then dropped. "I learned that too--Dan," she murmured.
It was quite a time before she had an opportunity to speak again, and, as she strove to rearrange her hair, it was a truly feminine remark:
"I expect I look a sight; I don't know what you must think of me."
"I think yo're the most beautiful girl in Arizona," he told her.
"Only in Arizona, Dan?" she teased.
"Arizona is my world," he replied.
"Mine too," she whispered, and brought about another interlude.
* Sudden and Yorky were paying a final visit to the Pool of the Pines, for--as Dan had predicted--Trenton's inducements and pleas had proved vain as his own. They had enjoyed their swim, and Nigger was waiting. The boy's expression was woebegone.
"I'll be missin' yer, Jim. Wish I c'd come too," he said, for about the twentieth time.
"So do I, but it's too chancy," the puncher replied. `Best yu should stay here, learn yore job, an' get them bellows o' yourn sound again. Then, mebbe, when I'm free, yu an' me'll go take a look at the country somewheres."
Yorky's eyes shone at the prospect. "Gee! Jim, that'd be swell," he breathed.
"So long, son," Sudden said, as he swung into the saddle. "Keep outa trouble, but if that ain't possible, see it through."
The boy watched the black horse and its rider until they were blotted out by a mist which was not of Nature's making; there was an unaccustomed lump in his throat.
"Just th' greatest guy--ever," he told the silence.
THE END