“We’re not considered proficient in the service unless we can make use of these things at two hundred yards, Billinger,” he replied, replacing the weapon in its holster.  “If it’s a running fight I’d rather have ’em than a carbine.  If it isn’t a running fight we’ll come in close.”

Philip looked at the agent as they galloped side by side through the long grass, and Billinger looked at him.  In the face of each there was something which gave the other assurance.  For the first time it struck Philip that his companion was something more than an operator at Bleak House Station.  He was a fighter.  He was a man of the stamp needed down at Headquarters, and he was bound to tell him so before this affair was over.  He was thinking of it when they came to the second ridge.

Five miles to the north and west loomed the black line of the Bad Lands.  To a tenderfoot they would not have appeared to be more than a mile distant.  Midway in the prairie between there toiled a human figure.  Even at that distance Philip and Billinger could see that it was moving, though with a slowness that puzzled them.  For several minutes they stood breathing their horses, their eyes glued on the object ahead of them.  Twice in a space of a hundred yards it seemed to stumble and fall.  The second time that it rose Philip knew that it was standing motionless.  Then it disappeared again.  He stared until the rolling heat waves of the blistered prairie stung his eyes.  The object did not rise.  Blinking, he looked at Billinger, and through the sweat and grime of the other’s face he saw the question that was on his own lips.  Without a word they spurred down the slope, and after a time Billinger swept to the right and Philip to the left, each with his eyes searching the low prairie grass.  The agent saw the thing first, still a hundred yards to his right.  He was off his horse when Philip whirled at his shout and galloped across to him.

“It’s her—­the girl I found in the wreck,” he said.  Something seemed to be choking him.  His neck muscles twitched and his long, lean fingers were digging into his own flesh.

In an instant Philip was on his feet.  He saw nothing of the girl’s face, hidden under a mass of hair in which the sun burned like golden fire.  He saw nothing but the crumpled, lifeless form, smothered under the shining mass, and yet in this moment he knew.  With a fierce cry he dropped upon his knees and drew away the girl’s hair until her lovely face lay revealed to him in terrible pallor and stillness, and as Billinger stood there, tense and staring, he caught that face close to his breast, and began talking to it as though he had gone “Isobel—­Isobel—­Isobel—­” he moaned.  “My God, my Isobel—­”

He had repeated the name a hundred times, when Billinger, who began to understand, put his hand on Philip’s shoulder and gave him his water canteen.

“She’s not dead, man,” he said, as Philip’s red eyes glared up at him.  “Here—­water.”