"I don't blame them," Thaine said thoughtlessly. "I haven't much use for a
farm myself. But Leigh, am I an unnecessary evil? I really turned 'Rory
Rumpus' and 'rode a raw-boned racer' clear over here just to be ready to
help you. I wish now I'd stayed home and dried the knives and forks and
spoons for my mammie."

"Oh, Thaine, you are as good as--as alfalfa hay, and I need you more today
than I ever did in my life before."

"And I want to help you more than anything. Don't be a still cat,
Leighlie. Tell me what you are up to."

They had reached the steep hill beyond the Jacobs sheep range where the
narrow road with what John Jacobs called "the scary little twist" wound
down between high banks to a shadowy hollow leading out to the open trail
by the willows along Big Wolf. At the break in the bank, opening a rough
way down to the deep waters of Little Wolf, a draught of cool air swept
up refreshingly against their faces. Thaine flattened the buggy top under
the shade of overhanging trees and held the horse to the spot to enjoy the
delightful coolness. They had no such eerie picture to prejudice them
against the place as the picture that haunted John Jacobs' mind here.

"I've bought a ranch, Thaine; the quarter section that Uncle Jim entered
in 1870," Leigh said calmly.

"Alice Leigh Shirley, are you crazy?" Thaine exclaimed.

"No, I'm safe and sane. But that's why I need your advice," Leigh
answered.

Something in the girl's appealing voice and perfect confidence of
friendship, so unlike Jo Bennington's pouting demands and pretty coquetry,
came as a revelation and a sense of loss to Thaine. For he loved Jo. He
was sure of that, cock-sure.

"It's this way," Leigh went on, "you know how Uncle Jim lost everything in
the boom except his honor. He's helped everybody who needed help, and
everybody likes him, I guess."

"I never knew anybody who didn't," Thaine agreed.

"So many things, I needn't name them all, bad crops, bad faith on the part
of others, bad luck and bad judgment and bad health, for all his size,
have helped till he is ready to go hopeless, and Uncle Jim's only
fifty-one. It's no time to quit till you're eighty in such a good old
state as Kansas," Leigh asserted. "Only, big as he is, he's not a real
strong man, and crumples down where small nervy men stand up."

"Well, lady landlord, how can I advise you? You are past advising. You
have already bought," Thaine said.

"You can tell me how to pay