ence very commonplace and uninteresting
at that moment, and her courtesy was of a perfunctory sort.

"I hope I don't intrude. Were you busy?" Joe asked, something of the
embarrassment of the first meeting coming back with the question.

"Yes, I was very busy," Jerry replied, with a smile. "Pick-up work,
though. I was just thinking. Lost in thought, maybe."

The moonlight can do so much for a pretty woman, but with Jerry Swaim
one could not say whether sunlight, moonlight, starlight, or dull gray
clouds did the most. For two weeks the memory of her fair face, as he
recalled it in the oak shade down beside the blowout, had not been
absent from the young ranchman's mind. And to-night this dainty girl out
of the East seemed entrancing.

"You were lost in thought when I saw you before. I had an idea that city
girls didn't do much thinking. Is it your settled occupation?" Joe
inquired, with a smile in his eyes.

"It is my only visible means of support right now; about as profitable,
too, as farming a blowout," Jerry returned.

"Which reminds me of my purpose in thrusting this call upon you," Joe
declared. "I didn't realize the situation the other day--and--well, to
be plain, I came to beg your pardon for my rudeness in what I said about
your claim. I had no idea who you were, you know, but that hardly
excuses me for what I said."

"It is very rude to speak so slightingly of land that behaves as
beautifully as mine does," Jerry said, with a smile that atoned for the
trace of sarcasm in her voice.

"It is very rude to speak as slightingly as I did of the former owner.
But you see I have watched that brainless blowout thing creep along,
season after season, eating up my acres--my sole inheritance, too."

"And you said you didn't go mad," Jerry interposed.

"Yes, but I didn't say I didn't get mad. I have worn out enough
profanity on that blowout to stock the whole Sage Brush Valley."

"But you aren't to the last resort, for you do go mad here then, you
told me. I wonder you aren't all madmen and women when I think of this
country and remember how different I had imagined it would be."

"When we come to the very last ditch, we really have two
alternatives--to go mad and to go back East. Most folks prefer the
former. But I say again, it's always a long way to the last ditch out on
the Sage Brush, so we seldom do either."

"What should I do now? Won't you tell me? I'm really near my last
ditch."

Jerry sat with clas