ture, Miss
Philbrook," he said, his voice slow and grave.

She lifted her grateful eyes with a look of appreciation that seemed to
him overpayment for a service proposed, rather than done. She went on,
then, with a description of her interesting neighbors.

"This ranch is a long, narrow strip, only about three miles wide by
twenty deep, the river at this end of it, Walleye Bostian at the other.
Along the sides there are various kinds of reptiles in human skin, none
of them living within four or five miles of our fences, the average
being much farther than that, for people are not very plentiful right
around here.

"On the north of us Hargus is the worst, on the south a man named Kerr.
Kerr is the biggest single-handed cattleman around here. His one
grievance against us is that we shut a creek that he formerly used along
inside our fences that forced him to range down to the river for water.
As the creek begins and ends on our land--it empties into the river
about a mile above here--it's hard for an unbiased mind to grasp Kerr's
point of objection."

"Have you ever taken a shot at him?" the Duke asked, smiling a little
dry smile.

"No-o," said she reflectively, "not at Kerr himself. Kerr is what is
usually termed a gentleman; that is, he's a man of education and wears
his beard cut like a banker's, but his methods of carrying on a feud are
extremely low. Fighting is beneath his dignity, I guess; he hires it
done."

"You've seen some fightin' in your time, ma'am," Taterleg said.

"Too much of it," she sighed wearily. "I've had a shot at his men more
than once, but there are one or two in that Kerr family I'd like to
sling a gun down on!"

It was strange to hear that gentle-mannered, refined girl talk of
fighting as if it were the commonest of everyday business. There was no
note of boasting, no color of exaggeration in her manner. She was as
natural and sincere as the calm breeze, coming in through the open
window, and as wholesome and pure. There was not a doubt of that in the
mind of either of the men at the table with her. Their admiration spoke
out of their eyes.

"When you've had to fight all your life," she said, looking up earnestly
into Lambert's face, "it makes you old before your time, and
quick-tempered and savage, I suppose, even when you fight in
self-defense. I used to ride fence when I was fourteen, with a rifle
across my saddle, and I wouldn't have thought any more of shooting a
man I saw cutt