be you've got nerve; you haven't shown much, so far
as I know--except when you talked to the boys that night. But you must
have known that they wouldn't hurt you anyway. A man must have a little
courage as much as I have; which isn't asking much--or I'd never marry
him in the world."

"Not even if you--liked him?" his smile was wistful.

"Not even if I loved him!" Mona declared, and fled into the house.

Thurston gathered himself together and went down to the stable and
borrowed a horse of Jack, who had just got back from town, and rode home
to the Lazy Eight.

When Hank heard that he was home to stay--at least until he could join
the roundup again--he didn't say a word for full five minutes. Then,
"Got your story done?" he drawled, and his eyes twinkled.

Thurston was going up the stairs to his old room, and Hank could not
swear positively to the reply he got. But he thought it sounded like,
"Oh, damn the story!"

CHAPTER IX. THE DRIFT OF THE HERDS

Weeks slipped by, and to Thurston they seemed but days. His
world-weariness and cynicism disappeared the first time he met Mona
after he had left there so unceremoniously; for Mona, not being aware of
his cynicism, received him on the old, friendly footing, and seemed to
have quite forgotten that she had ever called him a coward, or refused
to marry him. So Thurston forgot it also--so long as he was with her.

How he filled in the hours he could scarcely have told; certain it
is that he accomplished nothing at all so far as Western stories were
concerned. Reeve-Howard wrote in slightly shocked phrases to ask what
was keeping him so long; and assured him that he was missing much by
staying away. Thurston mentally agreed with him long enough to begin
packing his trunk; it was idiotic to keep staying on when he was clearly
receiving no benefit thereby. When, however, he picked up a book which
he had told Mona he would take over to her the next time he went, he
stopped and considered:

There was the Wagner trial coming off in a month or so; he couldn't get
out of attending it, for he had been subpoenaed as a witness for the
prosecution. And there was the beef roundup going to start before
long--he really ought to stay and take that in; there would be some fine
chances for pictures. And really he didn't care so much for the Barry
Wilson bunch and the long list of festivities which trailed ever in
its wake; at any rate, they weren't worth rushing two-thirds across t