"Yes, but I expect you don't like to ride with me so awful much."

"Yet you see I do," answered the girl with her swift, shy smile.

"And the reason is that you know I would be riding, anyway. You don't
want any of your people from the hills to use me as a mark. With you
along, they couldn't do it."

"My people don't shoot from ambush," she told him hotly. It was easy to
send her gallant spirit out in quick defense of her kindred.

He looked at his arm, still resting in a sling, and smiled
significantly.

She colored. "That was an impulse," she told him.

"And you're guarding me from any more family impulses like it." He
grinned. "Not that it flatters me so much, either. I've got a notion
tucked in the back of my head that you're watching me like a hen does
her one chick, for their sake and not for mine. Right guess, I'll bet a
dollar. How about it, Miss Sanderson?"

"Yes," she admitted. "At least, most for them."

"You'd like to call the chase off for the sake of the hunters, and not
for the sake of the coyote."

"I wish you wouldn't throw that word up to me. I oughtn't to have said
that. Please!"

"All right--I won't. It isn't your saying it, but thinking it, that
hurts."

"I don't think it."

"You think I'm entirely to blame in this trouble with your people. Don't
dodge. You know you think I'm a bully."

"I think you're very arbitrary," she replied, flushing.

"Same thing, I reckon. Maybe I am. Did you ever hear my side of the
story?"

"No. I'll listen, if you will tell me."

Weaver shook his head. "No--I guess that wouldn't be playing fair.
You're on the other side of the fence. That's where you belong. Come to
that, I'm no white-winged angel, anyhow. All that's said of me--most of
it, at least--I sure enough deserve."

"I wonder," she mused, smiling at him.

Scarcely a week before, she had been so immature that even callow Tom
Dixon had seemed experienced beside her. Now she was a young woman in
bloom, instinctively sure of herself, even without experience to guide
her. Though he had never said so, she knew quite well that this berserk
of the plains had begun to love her with all the strength of his untamed
heart. She would have been less than human had it not pleased her, even
though, at the same time, it terrified her.

Buck swept his hand around the horizon. "Ask anybody. They'll all give
me the same certificate of character. And I reckon they ain't so far
out, either," he added griml