did
not tend to make Kitty more contented and happy in Williamson Valley.

Toward Phil, Kitty was unchanged. Many times her heart called for him so
insistently that she wished she had never learned to know any life other
than that life to which they had both been born. If only she had not
spent those years away from home--she often told herself--it would all
have been so different. She could have been happy with Phil--very
happy--if only she had remained in his world. But now--now she was
afraid--afraid for him as well as for herself. Her friendship with
Patches had, in so many ways, emphasized the things that stood between
her and the man whom, had it not been for her education, she would have
accepted so gladly as her mate.

Many times when the three were together, and Kitty had led the talk far
from the life with which the cowboy was familiar, the young woman was
forced, against the wish of her heart, to make comparisons. Kitty did
not understand that Phil--unaccustomed to speaking of things outside his
work and the life interests of his associates, and timid always in
expressing his own thoughts--found it very hard to reveal the real
wealth of his mind to her when she assumed so readily that he knew
nothing beyond his horses and cattle. But Patches, to whom Phil had
learned to speak with little reserve, understood. And, knowing that the
wall which the girl felt separated her from the cowboy was built almost
wholly of her own assumptions, Patches never lost an opportunity to help
the young woman to a fuller acquaintance with the man whom she thought
she had known since childhood.

During the long winter months, many an evening at the Cross-Triangle, at
the Reid home, or, perhaps, at some neighborhood party or dance,
afforded Kitty opportunities for a fuller understanding of Phil, but
resulted only in establishing a closer friendship with Patches.

Then came the spring.

The snow melted; the rains fell; the washes and creek channels were
filled with roaring floods; hill and ridge and mountain slope and mesa
awoke to the new life that was swelling in every branch and leaf and
blade; the beauties of the valley meadow appeared again in fresh and
fragrant loveliness; while from fence-post and bush and grassy bank and
new-leaved tree the larks and mocking birds and doves voiced their glad
return.

And, with the spring, came a guest to the Cross-Triangle Ranch--another
stranger.

Patches had been riding the drift f