man's face for
the first time.

Afterward she remembered that he was powerfully built, that his eyes
were dark, and that his teeth showed white and even, as he repeated,
with a smile:

"You don't know anything worth knowing. You don't quite look the part."

"Why don't you answer my question?"

Back of the light in Jerry's eyes Joe saw that the tears were waiting,
and something in her face hurt him strangely.

"I think this claim is not worth--an effort," he declared, frankly,
looking out at the wind-heaved ridges of sand.

"What brought you here to look at it, then?" Jerry demanded.

"Partly to despise the fool who owned it and let it become a curse."

"Do you know him?" the girl inquired.

"No. But if I did I should despise him just the same," Joe Thomson
declared.

"What if he were dead?" Jerry asked.

"Pardon me, but may I ask what brought you down here to look at such a
place?" Joe interrupted her.

"I came down here to find out its value. It belongs to me. My only
inheritance. I have always lived in a big city until now, and I know
little of country life except its beauty and comfort, and nothing at all
of the West. But I can understand you when you say that this claim is
not worth an effort. I hope I shall never, never see it again. Good-by."

The firm, red lips quivered and the blue eyes looked up through real
tears as Jerry Swaim drew on her gloves and fitted the soft blue hat
down on the golden glory of her hair. Then without another word she
turned her car about and sped away.

II

JERRY AND JOE

VII

UNHITCHING THE WAGON FROM A STAR

How long is a mid-June day? Ticked off by the almanac, it is so much
time as lies between the day-dawn and the dark of evening. But Jerry
Swaim lived a lifetime in that June day in which she went out to enter
upon her heritage. From the moment she had turned away from the young
farmer under the oak-trees until she reached the forks of the road again
she did not take cognizance of a single object. The three big cottonwood
sentinels, the vine-covered ranch-home, the deep bend of the Sage Brush
to the eastward, were passed unnoted. Ponk's gray gadabout seemed to
know the way home like a faithful horse.

There was no apparent reason why the junction of the two highways should
have momentarily called the bewildered disappointed girl to her calmer
self. No more was there anything logical in her choosing to turn again
down the narrow river road. T