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Rhoda hobbled through the sand to the nearest rock On this she sank with a groan, clasped her slender foot with both hands and looked about her helplessly

She felt very small, very much alone The infinite wastes of yellow desert danced in heat waves against the bronze-blue sky The girl saw no sign of living thing save a buzzard that swept lazily across the zenith She turned dizzily fro the vast emptiness about her to a close scrutiny of her injured foot She drew off her thin satin house slipper painfully and dropped it unheedingly into a bunch of yucca that crowded against the rock Her silk stocking followed Then she sat in helplessher blue-veined foot

In spite of her evident invalidism, one could but wonder why she ly on the rock, gazing from her foot to the far lavender line of the mesas A tiny, impotent atom of life, she sat as if the eternal hich the desert hurls at one overwhelmed her, deprived her of hope, al of nobility in the steadiness hich she gazed at the nation, to her own helplessness and weakness

The girl was quite unconscious of the fact that a youngup the desert behind her He, however, had spied the white gown long before Rhoda had sunk to the rock and had laid his course directly for her He was a tall fellow, standing well over six feet and he swung through the heavy sand with an easy stride that covered distance with astonishing rapidity As he drew near enough to perceive Rhoda's yellow head bent above her injured foot, he quickened his pace, swung round the yucca thicket and pulled off his soft felt hat

"Good-!" he said "What's the matter?"

Rhoda started, hastily covered her foot, and looked up at the tall khaki-clad figure She never had seen the younglike a little crayfish bit my foot," she answered; "and you don't kno it hurts!"

"Ah, but I do!" exclai! Let me see it!"

Rhoda flushed

"Oh, never o to the Newman ranch-house for rateful I--I feel dizzy, you know"

"Gee whiz!" exclai man "There's no ti in your foot!"