at I really do want."

"Well, am I keeping you?" Billy Louise was certainly in a villainous
mood.

"You are," Ward affirmed quite calmly. "Only for you, I'd be hustling
like the mischief right this minute along the get-rich trail. Say,
Bill, I don't believe it's the dog!" He looked at her with the smile
hiding just behind his lips and his eyes. And behind the smile, if
one's insight were keen enough to see it, was a troubled anxiety. He
shifted the pail of currants to the other arm and spoke again:

"What is it, Wilhemina? Something's bothering you. Can't you tell a
fellow what it is?"

"No, I can't." Billy Louise spoke crossly. "I've got a headache.
I've been riding ever since this morning, and I should think that's
reason enough. I wish to goodness you'd let me alone. Go on back to
work, if you're so crazy about working; I'm sure I don't want to hinder
you in any of your get-rich-quick schemes!" She shut her teeth
together with a click, jerked Blue angrily into the trail when he had
merely stepped out of it to avoid a rock, and managed to make him as
conscious of her mood as was Ward.

Ward eyed her unobtrusively with his face set straight ahead. He
glanced down at the pail of currants, which was heavy, and at the
trail, which was long and lonely. He twisted his lips in brief
sarcasm--for he had a temper of his own--and rode on with his neck set
very stiff and his eyes a trifle harder than they had ever been before
when Billy Louise rode alongside. He did not turn off at the ford--and
Billy Louise betrayed by a quick glance at him that she had half
expected him to desert her there--but crossed it beside her and rode on
up the hill.

He had made up his mind that he would not speak to her again until she
wiped out, by apology or a change of manner, that last offensive remark
of hers. He hoped she realized that he was only going with her to
carry the currants, and he hoped she realized also that, if she had
been any other person who had spoken to him like that, he would have
dumped the currants on the ground and ridden off and left her to her
own devices.

He did not once speak to Billy Louise on the way to the Wolverine; but
his silence changed gradually from stubbornness to pure abstraction, as
they rode leisurely along the dusty trail with the sunset glowing
before them. He almost forgot the actual presence of Billy Louise, and
he did actually forget her mood. He was planning just how and w