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tangling their leathery swords together; even at their tips I had something thick as your arm and strong as an anchor-cable to take hold of. I swung up past one, two, three of them that way and then the williwaw came down shouting and knocked me flat as a domino.
    “I twisted as I fell so I wouldn’t land on the child. I held her tightto me with my right arm, and I threw up my left as some sort of guard over both of us. I distinctly saw a forty-foot Chaya cactus twist past overhead, and then I was hit. By what, I couldn’t say, but it hit my left forearm and my left fist came down on my chin, and that, for me, was the end of that part of the adventure.
    “When I opened my eyes I thought first I’d gone blind, and then it came to me that it was night, a black, scudding night, cold the way only this crazy either-or-and-all-the-way country can get. I was shaking like a gravel-sorter. Something had hold of my arm, which hurt, and I tried to pull it away and couldn’t.
    “It was the kid. She was crouched beside me, holding my left forearm in both her hands. She wasn’t shivering. Her hands were warm, too, though I suppose anything over forty degrees would feel warm just then. I stopped pulling and heaved up to see what I could see. The scud parted and let a sick flicker of moon show through, and that helped.
    “I had a five-inch gash in my arm—up and down, fortunately, not across, so it had missed any major blood-vessel. I could see the two ends of the cut, but between those ends lay the girl’s hands. Their pressure was firm and unwavering, and clotted blood had cemented her to me nice as you please. And she’d been sitting there holding the edges of the cut together—how long? Three hours? Four, five? I didn’t know. I don’t know now.
    “She tugged at me gently and we got our feet under us. We scrabbled down the bank until I could see the deep, strong creek that hadn’t been there that afternoon. We went downstream a piece until the bank shelved, squatted by the edge, and got her hands and my arm together into the water. In a few moments she worked a hand free, then the other. I bled a bit then, but not too much, and she helped me tie on my kerchief.
    “I sat down, partly to rest, mostly to look at her. She looked right back, with that same fearlessness showing even in the scudding dark. I thanked her but she didn’t say anything. I grinned at her but she didn’t smile. She just looked at me, not appraising, not defiant, just liking what she saw, and unafraid.
    “I took her back to Miguel’s. The old lady was raising particularhell, shaking her fists at the sky. Their rotten corral-pole was down and they’d lost two head of their hairy, bony, bot-ridden scrub cattle. I got a vague impression of two of the little ones staring big-eyed and scared from the drafty corner. I propelled the girl forward to the doorway and the old sow put out a claw and snatched her inside. I thought she raised her fist but I wasn’t ready to believe anything like that. Not that night. Then the door was closed and I slogged off toward Kofa.
    “About ten minutes later I saw her again, standing by the bank just out of the shadows of the yucca. If the moon hadn’t flashed I’d have missed her altogether. She faded back into the shadows and when I reached the place she was gone, though I yelled my head off. I do believe she had come to see for sure if I could navigate all right. How she got clear of the house and passed me in the dark is another thing I’ll never know.
    “It was a couple of days before I could get around easily with that arm. It was badly bruised and it swelled like a goatskin bottle, but the cut healed faster than a cut like that ought to. Call it clean air and good constitution, if you like. Got any makings?”
    “I don’t smoke,” I said.
    “That’s right.” He sighed. “No matter.
    “Well, a couple of days later I went back. Miguel had quite a pile of stuff for me. Good stuff, too, a lot of it. A