Everything he did now, he did for Belle more than for himself. As a
matter of course she became his real reason for living. She was like
the sun. He took her for granted, never questioning the blessed warmth
of her presence, never stopping to wonder what life would be like if
he lost her. She was beautiful, with a beauty that never palled and
never paled. She laughed a great deal, and he never could keep
laughter from his own lips while he listened. When she sang she put
the meadow larks to shame, and afterwards when he rode the range alone
Tom would whistle strange, new melodies that the Black Rim country
never had heard before,--melodies which Belle had taught him
unconsciously with her singing. He did not know that it would have
astonished a city dweller to hear the bad man of Black Rim Country
whistling Schubert's "Serenade" while he rode after cattle, or
Wagner's "Prize Song," or "Creole Sue," perhaps, since Belle, with
absolute impartiality, sang everything that she had ever heard sung.
On billboards before eastern theatres Belle Delavan had been called
"The Girl with a Thousand Songs." Audiences had been invited by the
stage manager to name any selection they might choose, assured that
Belle would sing it from memory. No wonder that her singing never grew
stale to Tom Lorrigan!

But mostly she busied herself with little domesticities that somehow
never included cooking, and with driving helter-skelter over the range
with two horses hitched to a buckboard, following Tom when he rode
after cattle. Do you think she should logically have learned to ride?
She did try it once on the gentlest horse that Tom owned, which was
not too gentle to run away with Belle. She rode that horse just two
hundred yards before she jolted so far from the saddle that she could
not find it again until some time after, when they had caught the
horse and led him to the corral.

"Not any more for me, Tom Lorrigan!" she gasped, flapping her two
pretty hands in eloquent disgust when Tom rode up to her. "I wouldn't
get on a horse's back again to star for the Queen of England! I'll
take that team of he-devils you've been breaking to drive, and I'll
drive 'em or break every bone in their bodies. I'm willing to get
behind any horse you've got; but to get on their backs--excuse me!"
She limped painfully to the house with her yellow hair blowing around
her shoulders and across her lips that would smile in spite of her
mishap.

After that Belle d