The day came and Bud Lee began to regret that he had given his promise
to go to Marcia's dance. All day he was taciturn, aloof, avoiding not
only the visitors from Rocky Bend and the other ranches, but his own
fellows as well. He took no part in the races, was missing when the
blazing trenches and smell of broiling meat told that the barbecue was
in progress. He worked with his horses as he had worked yesterday, as
he would work to-morrow. With the dusk he went, not to the men's
quarters, but to the old cabin at the Upper End.

Again and again that day he had thought of that look in Judith's eyes
when she had asked him to come for Marcia's sake. What the devil did
she mean by it? He didn't know exactly, but he did know that in its
own vague way it irritated him. Her eyes had laughed at him, they had
teased, they had told him that Judith herself wasn't wasting a single
thought upon Mr. Bud Lee, but that she had noticed his obvious interest
in Miss Langworthy.

"Damn it," muttered Lee. "I won't go."

But he had said that he would go, and in little things as in big ones
he was scrupulous. He would go, just to dance with Marcia and show
Miss Judith a thing or two. He felt unreasonably like taking Miss
Judith across his knee and spanking her. And he did have a curiosity
to see just what Judith would look like in a real party-dress.

"Poor little wild Indian," he grumbled. "She's got the making of a
wonder in her, and she doesn't even know it. What's worse, doesn't
care."

He sat with a dead cigarette between his fingers, staring at the
wind-blown flame of his coal-oil lamp. Judith was doing this as she
did everything that she set her two hands on, thoroughly and with her
whole heart and soul. In that lay the key to her character. There was
no half-way with her. When she gave, it was open-handedly, with no
reservation; where she loved or hated, it was unreservedly; if she gave
a dance it would be a dance for the countryside to remember.

Yesterday Hampton had wondered, grinning, what he'd look like in a
dress-suit again. Hadn't had a thing on here of late but his war togs.
Whereby he called attention to his turned-up overalls, soft shirt,
battered hat, and flapping vest with the tobacco-tag hanging out.

Bud Lee turned down the wick of his lamp, which had been smoking, and
sat staring at it another five minutes.

"By thunder," he said softly to himself. "I'll do it."

He shoved the bunk away from