e,--of course (with a blush)
I mean the heroine, and she has accepted him. But they are facing a
problem. In the story he has been a cowpuncher and of course has no
permanent home. And of course the reader will expect me to tell how
they lived after they had finally decided to make life's journey
together. Perhaps you can tell me how the hero should go about it."

"Do you reckon that any reader is that inquisitive?" he questioned.

"Why of course."

He looked anxiously at her. "In that case," he said, "mebbe the reader
would want to know what the heroine thought about it. Would she want
to go back East to live--takin' her cowpuncher with her to show off to
her Eastern friends?"

She laughed. "I thought you were not very good at pretending," she
said, "and here you are trying to worm a declaration of my intentions
out of me. You did not need to go about that so slyly," she told him,
with an earnestness that left absolutely no doubt of her determination,
"for I am going to stay right here. Why," she added, taking a deep
breath, and a lingering glance at the rift in the mountains where the
rose veil descended, "I love the West."

He looked at her, his eyes narrowing with sympathy. "I reckon it's a
pretty good little old country," he said. He smiled broadly. "An' now
I'm to tell you how to end your story," he said, "by givin' you the
hero's plans for the future. I'm tellin' you that they ain't what you
might call elaborate. But if your inquisitive reader must know about
them, you might say that Stafford is givin' his hero--I'm meanin', of
course, his range boss--a hundred dollars a month--bein' some tickled
over what his range boss has done for him.

"An' that there range boss knows when he's got a good thing. He's
goin' to send to Cimarron for a lot of stuff--fixin's an' things for
the heroine,--an' he's goin' to make a proposition to Ben Radford to
make his cabin a whole lot bigger. Then him an' the heroine is goin'
to live right there--right where the hero meets the heroine the first
time--when he come there after bein' bit by a rattler. An' then if any
little heroes or heroines come they'd have----"

Her hand was suddenly over his mouth. "Why--why----" she protested,
trying her best to look scornful--"do you imagine that I would think of
putting such a thing as that into my book?"

He grinned guiltily. "I don't know anything about writin'," he said,
properly humbled, "but I reckon it wouldn't