The man who had stepped out of the depths of the wheat quickly crossed the road, unhitched the traces, drew back the vehicle, and, glancing at the traveler's dusty and disordered clothes, said, with curt sympathy:-- "Spilt, too; but not hurt, eh ?" "No, neither of us.

I went over with the buggy when the wheel cramped, but SHE jumped clear." He made a gesture indicating the presence of another.

The man turned quickly.

There was a second figure, a young girl standing beside the grain from which he had emerged, embracing a few stalks of wheat with one arm and a hand in which she still held her parasol, while she grasped her gathered skirts with the other, and trying to find a secure foothold for her two neat narrow slippers on a crumbling cake of adobe above the fathomless dust of the roadway.

Her face, although annoyed and discontented, was pretty, and her light dress and slim figure were suggestive of a certain superior condition.
The man's manner at once softened with Western courtesy.