herself.

For a full minute Smith stood as they had left him--motionless, his
eyelids drooping. Rousing himself, he went to the window and looked into
the moonlight-flooded world outside. Huddled in a blanket, a squat figure
sat on a fallen cottonwood tree.

Smith eyed it, then asked himself contemptuously:

"Ain't that pure Injun?"

Taking his hat, he too stepped into the moonlight.

The woman did not look up at his approach, so he stooped until his cheek
touched hers.

"What's the matter, Prairie Flower?"

"My heart is under my feet." Her voice was harsh.

In the tone one uses to a sulky child, he said:

"Come into the house."

"You no like me, white man. You like de white woman."

Smith reached under the blanket and took her hand.

"Why don't you marry de white woman?"

He pressed her hand tightly against his heart.

"Come into the house, Prairie Flower."

Her face relaxed like that of a child when it smiles through its tears.
And Smith, in the hour when the first real love of his life was at its
zenith, when his heart was so full of it that it seemed well nigh
bursting, walked back to the house with the squaw clinging tightly to his
fingers.

VIII

THE BUG-HUNTER ELUCIDATES

The same instinct which made Ralston recognize Susie as his friend told
him that Smith was his enemy; though, verily, that person who would have
construed as evidences of esteem and budding friendship Smith's black
looks when Ralston presumed to talk with Dora, even upon the most ordinary
topics, would have been dull of comprehension indeed.

While no reason for remaining appeared to be necessary at the MacDonald
ranch, Ralston hinted at hunting stray horses; and casually expressed a
hope that he might be able to pick up a bunch of good ponies at a
reasonable figure--which explanation was entirely satisfactory to all save
Smith. The latter frequently voiced the opinion that Ralston lingered
solely for the purpose of courting the Schoolmarm, an opinion which the
grub-liners agreed was logical, since they too, along with the majority of
unmarried males for fifty miles around, cherished a similar ambition.

Dora had long since ceased to consider as extraordinary the extended
visits which strangers paid to the ranch; therefore, she saw nothing
unusual in the fact that Ralston stayed on.

If furtive-eyed and restless passers-by arrived after dark, slept in the
hay near their unsaddled horses, and departed at dawn,