Helen saw the racing horse make a desperate leap as the spurs tore his heaving sides; she saw that swiftly whirling loop leave the rider’s hand, as the man leaned forward in his saddle.  Curiously she watched the loop open with beautiful precision, as the coils were loosed and the long, thin line lengthened through the air.  It seemed to move so slowly—­those wickedly lowered horns were so near!  Then she saw the rider’s right hand move with flashlike quickness to the saddle horn, as he threw his weight back, and the horse, with legs braced and hoofs plowing the ground, stopped in half his own length, and set his weight against the weight of the steer.  The flexible riata straightened as a rod of iron, the steer’s head jerked sideways; his horns buried themselves in the ground; he fell, almost at her feet.  And then, as the cowboy leaped from his horse, Helen felt herself sinking into a soft, thick darkness that, try as she might, she could not escape.

Still master of himself, but with a kind of fierce coolness, Patches ran to the fallen steer and securely tied the animal down.  But when he turned to the woman who lay unconscious on the ground, a sob burst from his lips, and tears were streaming down his dust-grimed cheeks.  And as he knelt beside her he called again and again that name which, a year before, he had whispered as he stood with empty, outstretched arms, alone, on the summit of the Divide.

Lifting her in his arms, he carried her to the hammock, and finding water and a towel, wet her brow and face; and all the while, in an agony of fear, he talked to her with words of love.

Overwrought by the unexpected, and, to him, almost miraculous meeting with Helen—­weak and shaken by the strain of those moments of her danger, when her life depended so wholly upon his coolness and skill—­unnerved by the sight of her lying so still and white, and beside himself with the strength of his passion—­the man made no effort to account for her presence in that wild and lonely spot, so far from the scenes amid which he had learned to know and love her.  He was conscious only that she was there—­that she had been very near to death—­that he had held her in his arms—­and that he loved her with all the strength of his manhood.

Presently, with a low cry of joy, he saw the blood creep back into her white cheeks.  Slowly her eyes opened and she looked wonderingly up into his face.

“Helen!” he breathed.  “Helen!”

“Why, Larry!” she murmured, still confused and wondering.  “So it was you, after all!  But what in the world are you doing here like this?  They told me your name was Patches—­Honorable Patches.”

Then the man spoke—­impetuously, almost fiercely, his words came without thought.