s horse's hoofs upon the arid
soil that surrounded the Whipple shack, Mary Hope still stared out
through the open doorway, seeing nothing of the March barrenness,
seeing only the tender, inscrutable, tantalizing face of Lance
Lorrigan,--tantalizing because she could not plumb the depths of his
eyes, could not say how much of the tenderness was meant for her, how
much was born of the deep music of his voice, the whimsical,
one-sided smile.

And Lance, when he had ridden a furlong from the place, had dipped
into a shallow draw and climbed the other side, turned half around in
the saddle and looked back.

"Now, why did I go off and leave her like that? Like an actor walking
off the stage to make room for the other fellow to come on and say his
lines. There's no other fellow--thank heck! And here are two miles we
might be riding together--and me preaching to her about taking the
little, pleasant things that come unexpectedly!" He swung his horse
around in the trail, meaning to ride back; retraced his steps as far
as the hollow, and turned again, shaking his head.

"Anybody could stop at the schoolhouse just as school's out, and ride
a couple of miles down the road with the schoolma'am--if she let him
do it! Anybody could do that. But that isn't the reason, why I'm
riding on ahead. What the hell is the reason?"

He stopped again on the high level where he could look back and see
the Whipple shack squatted forlornly in the gray stretch of sage with
wide, brown patches of dead grass between the bushes.

"Lonesome," he named the wild expanse of unpeopled range land. "She's
terribly lonely--and sweet. Too lonely and sweet for me to play with,
to ride a few miles with--and leave her lonelier than I found her. I
couldn't. There's enough sadness now in those Scotch blue eyes. Damned
if I'll add more!"

He saw Mary Hope come from the shack, pause a minute on the doorstep,
then walk out to where her horse was tied to the post. He lifted the
reins, pricked his horse gently with the spurs and galloped away to
Jumpoff, singing no more.

CHAPTER TWELVE

SHE WILL, AND SHE WON'T

Cottonwood Spring was a dished-out oasis just under the easy slope of
Devil's Tooth Ridge. From no part of the Jumpoff trail could it be
seen, and the surrounding slope did not offer much inducement to
cattle in March, when water was plentiful; wherefore riders would
scarcely wander into the saucer-like hollow that contained the
cottonwoods an