."

"You're French," he said.

"My father is, not my mother. She was from Tennessee."

"I'm from the South, too."

"You didn't need to tell me that," she answered with a little smile.

"Oh, I'm a Westerner now, but you ought to have heerd me talk when I
first came out." He broached a grievance. "Say, will you tell yore dad
not to do that again? I'm no kid."

"Do what?"

"You know." The red flamed into his face. "If it got out among the boys
what he'd done, I'd never hear the last of it."

"You mean kissed you?"

"Sure I do. That ain't no way to treat a fellow. I'm past eighteen if I
am small for my age. Nobody can pull the pat-you-on-the-head-sonny stuff
on me."

"But you don't understand. That isn't it at all. My father is French.
That makes all the difference. When he kissed you it meant--oh, that he
honored and esteemed you because you fought for me."

"I been tellin' you right along that Billie Prince is to blame. Let him
go an' kiss Billie an' see if he'll stand for it."

A flash of roguishness brought out an unexpected dimple near the corner
of her insubordinate mouth. "We'll be good, all of us, and never do it
again. Cross our hearts."

Young Clanton reddened beneath the tan. Without looking at her he felt
the look she tilted sideways at him from under the long, curved lashes.
Of course she was laughing at him. He knew that much, even though he
lacked the experience to meet her in kind. Oddly enough, there pricked
through his embarrassment a delicious little tingle of delight. So long
as she took him in as a partner of her gayety she might make as much fun
of him as she pleased.

But the owlish dignity of his age would not let him drop the subject
without further explanation. "It's all right for yore dad to much you. I
reckon a girl kinder runs to kisses an' such doggoned foolishness. But a
man's different. He don't go in for it."

"Oh, doesn't he?" asked Polly demurely. She did not think it necessary to
mention that every unmarried man who came to the ranch wanted to make
love to her before he left. "I'm glad you told me, because I'm only a
girl and I don't know much about it. And since you're a man, of course
you know."

"That's the way it is," he assured her, solemn as a pouter.

She bit her lip to keep from laughing out, but on the heels of her mirth
came a swift reproach. In his knowledge of life he might be a boy, but in
one way at least he had proved himself a man. He had taken his li