s
home far up among them. She had not realized how heated she was. "Do
you want a drink?" she called back to the dining room.

He was standing directly behind her. She turned only to stumble
against him and before she knew what had happened he was raining kisses
on her resisting cheeks. Then his lips found hers and, faint with the
moment, she resisted no more.

After a long time she got one hand around his neck and laid the other
across his mouth: "Don't make so much noise," she whispered wildly.
"Belle will hear us!"

CHAPTER XXXVIII

THE UNEXPECTED CALL

The hush that followed the brain storm in the kitchen put Belle, quite
unsuspecting, to sleep. Laramie, with a tread creditable to a cat--and
a stealth natural to most carnivorous animals--closed the door without
breaking her heavy breathing. The shades, always drawn at nightfall,
called for no attention. In the living-room, there was preliminary
tiptoeing, and there were futile efforts on Kate's part to cool her
rebellious cheeks by applying her open hands to them--when she could
get possession of either one to do so. The small couch which served as
sofa was drawn out of range of even the protected windows, and the
floodgates were opened to the first unrestrained confidences together.

When they could talk of more serious things, Kate could not possibly
see how she could marry him; but this, in the circumstances, seemed to
cause Laramie no alarm. She admitted she had tried not to like him and
confessed how she had failed. "Every time I met you," she murmured,
"you seemed to understand me so well--you knew how a woman would like
to be treated--that's what I kept thinking about."

"You used to talk and laugh with Van Horn," he complained, jealously.
"When I came around, I couldn't drag a smile out of you with a lariat."

"You're getting a smile now that he isn't getting, aren't you?"

"Somehow you never acted natural with me."

"Jim!" It was the word he most wanted to hear, even if the reproach
implied the quintessence of stupidity. "Don't you understand, I wasn't
afraid of him, and I was of you!"

"And I only trying to get a chance to eat out of your hand!"

"How could I tell--after all I used to hear--but that you'd begin by
eating out of my hand and finish by eating me?"

He had to be told every word of her troubles at home, but her
uneasiness turned to the dangers threatening him. These, she
protested, he belittled too much. Ever