each as a conclusion was that he
might be troublesome to dissuade.

Yet with every moment she was the more determined to keep him from
carrying out his mission and the more resolved to make him pay for his
Western manners. All this was running through her head while the
coffee was being sipped. Unhappily, her father was where she could not
possibly reach him with a warning until Belle should reappear on the
scene. She tendered her now tractable guest a second cup of coffee.
It was accepted; he talked on, asking many questions, which were
answered more or less to his satisfaction. Not that his inquiries were
impertinent; they were chiefly silly, Kate thought. He seemed most
intent on establishing a friendly footing with a lunch-counter
attendant.

When his third cup had been drunk and payment tendered for it, and for
five or six sandwiches, Kate decided her time to escape had arrived.
She refused to accept his money: "No," she persisted, "I will not take
a thing for your lunch. Positively not. Oh, you may leave your dollar
on the counter, if you like--it will never go into the register."

"Why not?"

"I've told you."

"Say it again."

"You were very patient over my blunder in giving you cold coffee."

"To tell you the truth," he remarked with candor, "it didn't look to me
altogether like a blunder."

"Oh, it was," she insisted shamelessly; but she did not feel at all
sure he believed her. "And I won't take your money. I want you--" her
eyes fell the least bit with her repentant words--"to have a better
impression of this counter than cold coffee would give you. We're
trying so hard to build up a business."

"Golly!" observed her calm guest. "I thought a few minutes ago you
were trying to wreck one."

"You Medicine Bend men always make fun of this valley," Kate complained.

"I don't really belong in Medicine Bend," was his return.

"Where do you belong?"

"In the Falling Wall."

"Oh! that awful place?"

"Why knock the Falling Wall?"

"I never heard any good of it. No matter anyway; you may put up your
money. And some time when I am up in your country," she added
jestingly, "you can give _me_ a cup of cold coffee."

"We'll say nothing more about the coffee," he declared in blunt
fashion. "Just you come!" He yielded so honestly to deceit that Kate
was half ashamed at imposing on him.

"Tell me," he went on, spinning his silver dollar in leisurely fashion
on the smooth counter, "how am