ou didn't hate me."

"I thought I did, but I find I don't."

"Not worth hating, I suppose?"

She neither corrected nor rejected his explanation.

He touched his wounded arm as he went on: "If you don't hate me, why
this compliment to me? I reckon good, genuine hate sent that bullet."

The girl colored, but after a moment's hesitation answered:

"Once I shot a coyote when I saw it making ready to pounce on one of our
lambs. I did not hate that coyote."

"Thank you," he told her ironically.

Her gaze went back to the mountains. She had always had a capacity for
silence. But it was as extraordinary to her as to him how, in the past
few days, she had sloughed the shy timidity of a mountain girl and found
the enduring courage of womanhood. Her wits, too, had taken on the edge
of maturity. He found that her tongue could strike swiftly and sharply.
She was learning to defend herself in all the ways women have acquired
by inheritance.

Weaver's jaw set like a vise. Getting to his feet, he looked down at her
with the hard, relentless eyes that had made his name a terror.

"Good enough, Miss Phyllis Sanderson. You've chosen your way. I'll
choose mine. You've got to learn that I'm master here; and, by God, I'll
teach it to you. Before I get through with you, young woman, you'll
come running when I snap my fingers. From to-day things will be
different. You'll eat your meals with us and not in your room. You'll
speak when you're spoken to. Set yourself up against me, and I'll bring
you to your knees fast enough. There's no law on the Twin Star Ranch but
Buck Weaver's will."

He strode away, almost herculean in figure, and every inch of him
forceful. She had never seen such a man, one so virile and, at the same
time, so wilful and so masterful. Before he was out of her sight, she
got an instance of his recklessness.

A Mexican vaquero was driving some horses into a corral. His master
strode up to him, and dragged him from the saddle.

"Didn't I tell you to take the colts down to the long pasture?"

"_Si, senor,_" answered the trembling native.

Weaver's great fist rose and fell once. The Mexican sank limply down.
Without another glance at him, the cattleman flung him aside, and strode
to the house.

As the owner of the Twin Star had said, so it was. Thereafter Phyllis
sat at the table with him and his sister, while Josephine, the Mexican
woman, waited upon them. The girl came and went at his bidding. But she
held