n in
the face. It's--why, it's an insult to my self-respect and my honesty
to even hint that I could do anything but what I'm going to do. The
very fact that your dad ain't going to force the debt makes it all the
more necessary that I should pay it.

"Why, good golly, Mary V! I'd feel better toward your father if he had
me arrested for being an accomplice with those horse thieves, or
slapped an attachment on the plane or something, than wave the whole
thing off the way he's doing. It'd show he looked on me as a man,
anyway.

"I'll be darned if I appreciate this way he's got of treating it like a
spoiled kid's prank. I'm going to make him recognize the fact that I'm
a _man_, by golly, and that I look at things like a man. He's got to
be proud to have me in the family, before I come into the family. He
ain't going to take me in as one more kid to look after. I'll come in
as his equal in honesty and business ability,--instead of just a new
fad of Mary V's--"

"Well, for gracious sake, Johnny! If you feel that way about it, why
didn't you say so? You don't seem to care what I think, or how I feel
about it. You don't seem to care whether you ever get married or not.
And I'm sure I wasn't the one that did the proposing. Why, it will
take years and _years_ to square up with dad, if you insist on doing it
in a regular business way--"

Johnny's harsh laugh stopped her. "You see, you do know where I stand,
after all. If I let it slide, the way you want me to, that's exactly
what you'd be thinking after awhile--that I never had squared up with
your dad. You'd look down on me, and so would your father and your
mother. They'd always be afraid I'd do some fool thing and sting your
dad again for a few thousand."

"Well, of all the crazy talk! And I've gone to the trouble of coaxing
dad to give you a share in the Rolling R instead of putting it in his
will for me. And dad's going to do it--"

"Oh, no, he isn't. I don't want any share in the Rolling R. I'd go to
jail before I'd take it."

Mary V produced woman's final argument. "If you cared anything at all
for me, Johnny, when I ask you to come back and do what dad is willing
to have you do, you'd do it. I don't see how you can be stubborn
enough to refuse such a perfectly wonderful offer. You wouldn't, if
you cared a snap about me. You act just as if you were sorry--"

"Aw, lay off that don't-care stuff!" Johnny growled indignantly.
"Caring for you