“I don’t care to hear any apologies, sir,” she said stiffly.

“I’m not offering any,” he laughed, yet stung by her words.

“You’re merely insulting me again, I presume?”

“Some young women need punishing.  I expect you’re one.”

She handed him the horsewhip, a sudden pulse of passion beating fiercely in her throat.  “Very well.  Make an end of it and let me see the last of you,” she challenged.

He cracked the lash expertly so that the horses quivered and would have started if his strong hand had not tightened on the lines.

The Westerner laughed again.  “You’re game anyhow.”

“When you are quite through with me,” she suggested, very quietly.

But he noticed the fury of her deep-pupiled eyes, the turbulent rise and fall of her bosom.

“I’ll not punish you that way this time.”  And he gave back the whip.

“If you won’t use it I will.”

The lash flashed up and down, twined itself savagely round his wrist, and left behind a bracelet of crimson.  Startled, the horses leaped forward.  The reins slipped free from his numbed fingers.  Miss Kinney had made her good-by and was descending swiftly into the valley.

The man watched the rig sweep along that branch of the road which led to the south.  Then he looked at his wrist and laughed.

“The plucky little devil!  She’s a thoroughbred for fair.  You bet I’ll make her pay for this.  But ain’t she got sand in her craw?  She’s surely hating me proper.”  He laughed again in remembrance of the whole episode, finding in it something that stirred his blood immensely.

After the trap had swept round a curve out of sight he disappeared in the mesquite and bear-grass, presently returning with the roan that had been ridden by the escaped convict.

“Whoever would suppose she was the sister of that scurvy scalawag with jailbird branded all over his hulking hide?  He ain’t fit to wipe her little feet on.  She’s as fine as silk.  Think of her going through what she is to save that coyote, and him as crooked as a dog’s hind leg.  There ain’t any limit to what a good woman will do for a man when she thinks he’s got a claim on her, more especially if he’s a ruffian.”

With this bit of philosophic observation he rolled a cigarette and lit it.

“Him fall into bad company and be led away?” he added in disgust.  “There ain’t any worse than him.  But he’ll work her to the limit before she finds it out.”

Leisurely he swung to the saddle and rode down into the valley of the San Xavier, which rolled away from his feet in numberless tawny waves of unfeatured foot-hills and mesas and washes.  Almost as far as the eye could see there stretched a sea of hilltops bathed in sun.  Only on the west were they bounded, by the irregular saw-toothed edge of the Frenchman Hills, silhouetted against an incomparable blue.  For a stretch of many miles the side of the range was painted scarlet by millions of poppies splashed broadcast.