the
first man that put mine down. That's why I lit out after you to-day."

Again they clasped hands, and again Slosson's hand went down. He was a
broad-shouldered, heavy-muscled young giant, at least half a head
taller than Daylight, and he frankly expressed his chagrin and asked
for a third trial. This time he steeled himself to the effort, and for
a moment the issue was in doubt. With flushed face and set teeth he
met the other's strength till his crackling muscles failed him. The
air exploded sharply from his tensed lungs, as he relaxed in surrender,
and the hand dropped limply down.

"You're too many for me," he confessed. "I only hope you'll keep out
of the hammer-throwing game."

Daylight laughed and shook his head.

"We might compromise, and each stay in his own class. You stick to
hammer-throwing, and I'll go on turning down hands."

But Slosson refused to accept defeat.

"Say," he called out, as Daylight and Dede, astride their horses, were
preparing to depart. "Say--do you mind if I look you up next year?
I'd like to tackle you again."

"Sure, son. You're welcome to a flutter any time. Though I give you
fair warning that you'll have to go some. You'll have to train up, for
I'm ploughing and chopping wood and breaking colts these days."

Now and again, on the way home, Dede could hear her big boy-husband
chuckling gleefully. As they halted their horses on the top of the
divide out of Bennett Valley, in order to watch the sunset, he ranged
alongside and slipped his arm around her waist.

"Little woman," he said, "you're sure responsible for it all. And I
leave it to you, if all the money in creation is worth as much as one
arm like that when it's got a sweet little woman like this to go
around."

For of all his delights in the new life, Dede was his greatest. As he
explained to her more than once, he had been afraid of love all his
life only in the end to come to find it the greatest thing in the
world. Not alone were the two well mated, but in coming to live on the
ranch they had selected the best soil in which their love would
prosper. In spite of her books and music, there was in her a wholesome
simplicity and love of the open and natural, while Daylight, in every
fiber of him, was essentially an open-air man.

Of one thing in Dede, Daylight never got over marveling about, and that
was her efficient hands--the hands that he had first seen taking down
flying shorthand notes and tick