loom. She got to her feet and hastened toward the plow. So
brief had been her meeting with the storekeeper that, immediately
following it, his features had escaped her. Now she recalled them, and
thought she recalled that, when he had accosted her, they had worn a
mocking expression. What if her father, in his sudden excitement and
concern, should tell Lounsbury that the claim was not yet filed upon!
should confide in this stranger, who might then take advantage of the
ignorance, age and crippled condition of the section-boss! Hurriedly,
she unhitched Ben and Betty, hung their bridles on the hames, and turned
the team loose to graze. Then she started homeward, with Simon close
upon her heels, and as she crossed the cloud-darkened claim, she glanced
again at the shack. Its windows were in shadow, its door almost
obscured. There was a smirk on its twisted face.

But when, entering the house, she met Lounsbury's kind, level look, the
distrust she had felt unconsciously vanished.

He was seated astride a bench to the left of the fireplace, his hat
flung down in front of him, his shoulders against the wall, his booted
legs thrust out restfully across the floor. Dallas, seeing him out of
the saddle for the first time, was struck by his splendid length, next
by his heaviness--a round, but muscular, heaviness that she had never
noted in a Texan. Leaning back with folded arms, he showed, however,
despite his weight and rotundity, the pliance and the litheness of the
Westerner. His hair was dark and thick and worn in a careless part, his
throat was bronzed above the lacings of his shirt, his face
clean-shaven, somewhat square--yet full--and set with blue eyes that
showed an abiding glint of merriment.

If Dallas, as she crossed the sill, formed, with the swift keenness of
the plainswoman, a new and truer estimate of Lounsbury, he, saluting
cordially, failed not to measure her. The dirt-floored shack,
partitioned by Navajo blankets and furnished with unplaned benches, was
a background totally unsuited to Marylyn's delicate beauty; but for the
elder daughter of the section-boss, its very rude simplicity seemed
strangely fine and fitting.

Many women had come under the storekeeper's notice during his frontier
life: Roughly reared women of pure ways who toiled and bore with the
patience of beasts; the women of the army, matching, in dress and
habits, those he had known as a boy; and, last of all, the kind that
always follows in t