than it is in Middleton, or New York.
And, it isn't because they're all so happy in their own marriages,
either. Look at old Mrs. Stratford, who was bound and determined that
I must marry that Archie Smith-Jones; she's been married four times,
and divorced three. And Archie never will amount to a row of pins. He
looks like a tailor's model, and acts like a Rolls-Royce. And, I
don't see any supreme bliss about Mrs. Watts's married existence,
although she's perfectly satisfied, I guess, poor thing. I love the
subtle finesse with which she tried to arrange a match between me and
Mr. Bethune. ''Ef I wus yo' I'd marry up with him'--just like that!
Shades of Mrs. Stratford who spent two whole months trying to get
Archie and me into the same canoe! And when she did, the blamed thing
tipped over and ruined the only decent summer things I had, all
because that fool Archie thought he had to stand up to fend the canoe
off the pier.... At least, Mr. Bethune has got some sense, and he is
good looking, and he seems to have money, and there is a certain dash
and verve about him that one would hardly expect to find here in the
hills--and yet--there's something--it isn't his Indian blood, I don't
care a cent about that--but sometimes, there's something about him
that makes me wonder if he's genuine."

She passed through the cottonwood grove and emerged into the open only
a few hundred yards below the sheep camp. A moment later she halted
abruptly and stared toward the cabin. Two saddled horses stood before
the door, reins hanging loosely, and upon the edge of a low cut-bank,
just below the shallow waters of the ford, two men were struggling,
locked in each other's embrace. Hastily the girl drew back into the
cover of the grove and watched with intense interest the two forms
that weaved precariously above the deep pool formed by a sudden bend
in the creek. The horses she recognized as Vil Holland's buckskin, and
the big, blaze-faced bay ridden by Lord Clendenning. In the gathering
dusk she could not make out the faces of the two men, but by their
heaving, circling, swaying figures she knew that mighty muscles were
being strained to their utmost, and that soon one or the other must
give in. A dozen questions flashed through the girl's brain. What were
they doing there? Why were they fighting at the very door of her
cabin? And, above all, what would be the outcome? Would one of them
kill the other? Would one of them be left maimed and blee