e of
himself.

"Or South with Nick Pringle, or East with someone else," she said,
quizzically. "There's always four quarters to the compass, even when Abe
Hawley thinks he owns the world and has a mortgage on eternity. I'm not
going West with Bantry, but there's three other points that's open."

With an oath the man caught her by the shoulders, and swung her round to
face him. He was swelling with anger. "You--Nick Pringle, that trading
cheat, that gambler! After four years, I--"

"Let go my shoulders," she said, quietly. "I'm not your property. Go and
get some Piegan girl to bully. Keep your hands off. I'm not a bronco for
you to bit and bridle. You've got no rights. You--" Suddenly she relented,
seeing the look in his face, and realizing that, after all, it was a
tribute to herself that she could keep him for four years and rouse him to
such fury. "But yes, Abe," she added, "you have some rights. We've been
good friends all these years, and you've been all right out here. You said
some nice things about me just now, and I liked it, even if it was as if
you'd learned it out of a book. I've got no po'try in me; I'm plain
homespun. I'm a sapling, I'm not any prairie-flower, but I like when I
like, and I like a lot when I like. I'm a bit of hickory, I'm not a
prairie-flower--"

"Who said you was a prairie-flower? Did I? Who's talking about
prairie-flowers--"

He stopped suddenly, turned round at the sound of a footstep behind him,
and saw, standing in a doorway leading to another room, a man who was
digging his knuckles into his eyes and stifling a yawn. He was a
refined-looking stripling of not more than twenty-four, not tall, but
well-made, and with an air of breeding, intensified rather than hidden by
his rough clothes.

"Je-rick-ety! How long have I slept?" he said, blinking at the two beside
the fire. "How long?" he added, with a flutter of anxiety in his tone.

"I said I'd wake you," said the girl, coming forward. "You needn't have
worried."

"I don't worry," answered the young man. "I dreamed myself awake, I
suppose. I got dreaming of redcoats and U. S. marshals, and an ambush in
the Barfleur Coulee, and--" He saw a secret, warning gesture from the
girl, and laughed, then turned to Abe and looked him in the face. "Oh, I
know him! Abe Hawley's all O.K.--I've seen him over at Dingan's Drive.
Honor among rogues. We're all in it. How goes it--all right?" he added,
carelessly, to Hawley, and took a step forwar