more, holding her chin high
in self-sufficient arrogance. She would take the best out of life as it
offered and be done with ideals that ended in emotional hysteria like
this present experience. Life was a compromise anyhow. If she couldn't
have the substance, she would have the shadow. If she couldn't have
friendships given her, she'd buy imitations that would answer. If love
and romance were not for her, she'd accept the expedient that offered
and be satisfied!

Bowers was not due at headquarters for several days, so as soon as Kate
found the leisure she set out to take his mail to him, anticipating with
some enjoyment his confusion when he saw the extent of it. She came
across him out in the hills, engaged in some occupation which so
absorbed him that he did not hear her until she was all but upon him.

"Oh, hello!" His face lighted up in pleased surprise when he saw her. "I
was jest skinnin' out a rattlesnake for you."

"Were you, Bowers?" She looked at him oddly. "You are always doing
something nice for me, aren't you?"

"This is the purtiest rattler I've seen this season," he declared with
enthusiasm. "Look at the markin' on him. I thought it ud show up kind of
nifty laid around the cantle of your saddle. A rattlesnake skin shore
makes a purty trimmin', to my notion. Don't know what he was doin' out
of his hole so late in the season. He was so chilled I got him easy--an
old feller--nine rattles and a button."

Kate got off her horse and sat down to watch him while Bowers enumerated
the possibilities of snake skins as decorations.

"I brought your mail to you," she said when he had finished.--"Letters."

"Now who could be writin' to me?" he demanded in feigned innocence.

"I'm curious myself, since there's a bushel," she answered dryly.

Bowers looked up at the bulging mail sack and colored furiously. Then he
blurted out in desperate candor:

"I ain't honest, but I won't lie--I been advertisin'."

"What for?"

The perspiration broke out on Bowers's forehead.

"I thought I'd git married, if anybody that looked good to me would have
me."

"You're not happy, Bowers?" she asked gently.

"I ain't sufferin', but I ain't livin' in what you'd call no seventh
heaven."

Kate smiled at the grim irony of his tone.

"It's not up to much, this life of ours out here," she agreed in a low
voice.

"Nothin' to look forward to--nothin' to look back to," he said bitterly.

"I understand," Kate nodded.

"I nev