lmas. You might enjoy some of them."

"Now that's nice of you, ma'am. Mebbe I'll look into this
cattle-stealin' in your neighborhood, and if I do I'll sure come
borrowin'."

"Oh, I'll send you a boxful when I get back," said Alaire, and Dave
thanked her humbly.

Later, when he went to move his mare into a shady spot, the Ranger
chuckled and slapped his thigh with his hat. "Bessie Belle, we're going
to improve our minds," he said, aloud. "We're going to be literary and
read Pilgrim's Progress and Alice in Wonderland. I bet we'll enjoy 'em,
eh? But--doggone! She's a nice lady, and your coat is just the same
color as her hair."

Where the shade was densest and the breeze played most freely, there
Dave fixed a comfortable couch for his guest, and during the heat of
the forenoon she dozed.

Asleep she exercised upon him an even more disturbing effect than when
awake, for now he could study her beauty deliberately, from the loose
pile of warm, red hair to the narrow, tight-laced boots. What he saw
was altogether delightful. Her slightly parted lips offered an
irresistible attraction--almost an invitation; the heat had lent a
feverish flush to her cheeks; Dave could count the slow pulsations of
her white throat. He closed his eyes and tried to quell his unruly
longings. He was a strong man; adventurous days and nights spent in the
open had coarsened the masculine side of his character, perhaps at
expense to his finer nature, for it is a human tendency to revert. He
was masterful and ruthless; lacking obligations or responsibilities of
any sort, he had been accustomed to take what he wanted; therefore the
gaze he fixed upon the sleeping woman betrayed an ardor calculated to
deepen the color in her cheeks, had she beheld it.

And yet, strangely enough, Dave realized that his emotions were
unaccountably mixed. This woman's distress had, of course, brought a
prompt and natural response; but now her implicit confidence in his
honor and her utter dependence upon him awoke his deepest chivalry.
Then, too, the knowledge that her life was unhappy, indeed tragic,
filled him with a sort of wondering pity. As he continued to look at
her these feelings grew until finally he turned away his face. With his
chin in his hands he stared out somberly into the blinding heat. He had
met few women, of late years, and never one quite like this--never one,
for instance, who made him feel so dissatisfied with his own
shortcomings.

After a t