time as I know how to."

She put up her hand: "Wait till you see how you like _my_ good time."

He was quick to come back. "I'll agree right now to like anything you
offer--and I don't care a hang what it is, either."

Looking straight at him she asked a question. Its emphasis lay in her
quiet tone: "Will you stand to that?" He looked at her until she felt
his eyes were going right through her: "I've got enemies," he said
slowly, and there was now more than a touch of hardness in his voice;
"most men have. But the worst of 'em never claimed my word isn't good."

"Then," exclaimed Kate, hastening to escape the serious tone, "you tend
counter while I go and see about the horses."

"No," he objected, "that's a man's job. You tell me where to go and
_I'll_ get the horses."

Kate was most firm: "If you're going to ride with _me_," she said, "you
must do my way. Take a woman's job for a few minutes and see how you
like it."

He regarded her with the simplicity of a child, but replied like a
case-hardened cowboy: "I don't like a woman's job, of course. But I'm
ready to do any blamed thing you say."

"Do you suppose," Kate demanded with an air, "they would turn two
horses over to _you_ up at Doubleday's?"

She had put her foot in it: "I tell you," he protested, "I don't want
to ride a horse of Doubleday's. I'm up here to talk to Barb Doubleday.
And nobody can say just how it's coming out. At the ranch they swore
he was at Sleepy Cat. I rode down there and they told me he was at the
Junction, so I took the train over here. Now you tell me he's at the
mines--that's where I'll say what I've got to say. But I don't want to
take any advantage. And I don't want to impose on his property rights
so much as a single hair. That's exactly what's between us."

Kate, established in treacherous ambush, felt qualms at his stern,
clear code.

She tried to shut him off, but he was wrought up: "Barb swore to me
once he had nothing to do with it," he persisted obstinately. "All I
can say is, if a man fools me once it's his fault; if he fools me
twice, it's mine."

"What about a woman?" asked Kate, trying hard to say one thing and
think another.

He opened his eyes: "I never thought much about that. A man can't
fight a woman," he returned reflectively. "And I've yet to see one I
could fool."

"What should you do," she asked, turning her back while she
straightened her hat in the buffet mirror, "if you ever met o