s young."

"What's the matter with this Houck? Why don't you like him?"

"If you'd see him--how he looks at me." She flashed to anger. "As if I
was something he owned and meant to tame."

"Oh, well, you know the old sayin', a cat may look at a king. He can't
harm you."

"Can't he? How do you know he can't?" she challenged.

"How can he, come to that?"

"I don't say he can." Looked at in cold blood, through the eyes of
another, the near-panic that had seized her a few hours earlier appeared
ridiculous. "But I don't have to like him, do I? He acted--hateful--if
you want to know."

"How d'you mean--hateful?"

A wave of color swept through her cheeks to the brown throat. How could
she tell him that there was something in the man's look that had disrobed
her, something in his ribald laugh that had made her feel unclean? Or
that the fellow had brushed aside the pride and dignity that fenced her
and ravished kisses from her lips while he mocked? She could not have put
her feeling into words if she had tried, and she had no intention of
trying.

"Mean," she said. "A low-down, mean bully."

The freckled boy watched her with a curious interest. She made no more
sex appeal to him than he did to her, and that was none at all. The first
thing that had moved him in the child was the friendlessness back of her
spitfire offense. She knew no women, no other girls. The conditions of
life kept her aloof from the ones she met casually once or twice a year.
She suspected their laughter, their whispers about the wild girl on
Piceance Creek. The pride with which she ignored them was stimulated by
her sense of inferiority. June had read books. She felt the clothes she
made were hideous, the conditions of her existence squalid; and back of
these externals was the shame she knew because they must hide themselves
from the world on account of the secret.

Bob did not know all that, but he guessed some of it. He had not gone
very far in experience himself, but he suspected that this wild creature
of the hills was likely to have a turbulent and perhaps tragic time of
it. She was very much a child of impulse. Thirstily she had drunk in all
he could tell her of the world beyond the hills that hemmed them in. He
had known her frank, grateful, dreamy, shy, defiant, and once, for no
apparent reason, a flaming little fury who had rushed to eager repentance
when she discovered no offense was meant. He had seen her face bubbling
with mirth at