Allen clasped her two gloved hands together and drew a long
breath. "I should want to run out and stop it," she declared. "To think
of water actually running around loose in this world!! And think of us
up on that dry prairie, paying fifty cents a barrel for it--and a lot
slopped out of the barrel on the road!" She glanced down into Andy's
love-lighted eyes, and her own softened. She placed her hand on his
shoulder and shook her head at him with a tender remonstrance.

"I know, boy--but it isn't in me to give up anything I set out to do,
any more than it is in you. You wouldn't like me half so well if I could
just drop that claim and think no more about it. I've got enough money
to commute, when the time comes, and I'll feel a lot better if I
go through with it now I've started. And--James!" She smiled at him
wistfully. "Even if it is only eighty acres, it will make good pasture,
and--it will help some, won't it?"

After that you could not expect Andy Green to do any more badgering or
to discourage the girl. He did like her better for having grit and a
mental backbone--and he found a way of telling her so and of making the
assurance convincing enough.

He filled her canvas water-bags and went with her to carry them, and he
cheered her much with his air-castles. Afterwards he took the team and
rustled a water-barrel and hauled her a barrel of water and gave
Kate Price a stony-eyed stare when she was caught watching him
superciliously; and in divers ways managed to make Miss Rosemary Allen
feel that she was fighting a good fight and that the odds were all in
her favor and in the favor of the Happy Family--and of Andy Green in
particular. She felt that the spite of her three very near neighbors
was really a matter to laugh over, and the spleen of Florence Hallman a
joke.

But for all that she gave Andy Green one last warning when he climbed
up to the spring seat of the wagon and unwound the lines from the
brake-handle, ready to drive back to his own work. She went close to the
front wheel, so that eavesdroppers could not hear, and held her front
hair from blowing across her earnest, wind-tanned face while she looked
up at him.

"Now remember, boy, do go and file your answer to those contests--all
of you!" she urged. "I don't know why--but I've a feeling some kind of
a scheme is being hatched to make you trouble on that one point. And if
you see Buck, tell him I'll ride fence with him tomorrow again. If you
realized h