k you to share your life with me, your work, your
revenge, everything."

"Not yet----"

"I can't bear to see you and Marylyn staying here alone. And I can't
stay near enough to protect you as I ought. Matthews is sly. If I meet
him, I'll kill him, as I would a wolf. Then, he'll be out of the way.
But--suppose he gets ahead of me? does you harm? Your staying here seems
all the more terrible to me since I've been East. The idea of your
having just Charley to guard, of your plowing and planting and cutting
hay----"

She laughed. "Outside work is fine," she said. "Better than cooking over
a hot stove or breaking your back over a tub. Men have the best half of
things--the air and the sky and the horses. I don't complain. I like my
work. Let it make me like a man."

"It couldn't. I don't mean that. You're the womanliest woman I've ever
known."

"I don't want you to ever think different."

"Never will. And I don't ask you to chain yourself up in a house.
There's a big future in the cow business. We'd take my share of the
Clark herd--you'd ride with me--we'd be partners."

"Wait--wait." Temptation was dragging sorely at her heart. She glanced
homeward. Behind her, the tall grass was running with the wind. She
longed to run with it. Yet----

"I'll wait and wait," he said; "long as you ask, if it's years."

She retreated a few steps. "I must go now. Don't think I don't know what
you've done for us--the sutler, and all that. I'll remember it. But I
got to go--good-by."

"Good-night, not good-by," he answered. "Can't I come this far and help
you to-morrow with the hay?"

"No, no."

"Let me send a couple of men, then."

"I'll do it alone. I'd rather. It's all in but this little bit."

"But please go slow. Don't wear yourself out, Dallas."

"If my work was all!" she said sorrowfully.

"If you would come here, now and then, to me, dear----"

"I'll never come again. This once, I couldn't help it. Oh, I tried and
tried! But next time I can. I'll think of Marylyn. Why, I'd give my life
to make her happy!"

"But your love--that goes where it pleases."

"You won't come to see her?"

"It wouldn't help. But I'll be here every night."

She retreated again. He did not attempt to follow.

"Good-night," she said.

"Good-night, good-night."

The moon was drifting up the eastern sky, and, as she went, her shadow
pursued her. He watched until it blended with the shadow of the shack.
Then, walked far to the left, and