thing. I hardly know which was the more unpleasant to dwell
upon, but I do know that it made me mighty poor company for Edith. I sat
there on a near-by rock and lighted cigarettes, only to let them go out,
and glowered at King's Highway, off across the flat, as if it were the
mouth of the bottomless pit. I can't wonder that Edith called me a bear,
and asked me repeatedly if I had toothache, or anything.

By and by she had her kodak in working order again, and took two or three
pictures of the divide. Edith is very pretty, I believe, and looks her
best in short walking-costume. I wondered why she had not ridden out to
the butte; Beryl had, the time I met her there, I remembered. She had a
deep-chested blue roan that looked as if he could run, and I had noticed
that she wore the divided skirt, which is so popular among women who ride.
I don't, as a rule, notice much what women have on--but Beryl King's feet
are altogether too small for the least observant man to pass over. Edith's
feet were well shod, but commonplace.

"I wish you'd let me have one of those pictures when they're done,"
I told her, as amiably as I could.

She pushed back a lock of hair. "I'll send you one, if you like, when
I get home. What address do you claim, in this wilderness?"

I wrote it down for her and went my way, feeling a badly used young man,
with a strong inclination to quarrel with fate. Edith had managed, during
her well-meant efforts at entertaining me, to couple Mr. Weaver's name all
too frequently with that of her cousin. I found it very depressing--a good
many things, in fact, were depressing that day.

I went back to camp and stuck to work for the rest of that week--until
some of the boys told me that they had seen the Kings' guests scooting
across the prairie in the big touring-car of Weaver's, evidently headed
for Helena.

After that I got restless again, and every mile the round-up moved south
I took as a special grievance; it put that much greater distance between me
and King's Highway--and I had got to that unhealthy stage where every
mile wore on my nerves, and all I wanted was to moon around that little
butte. I believe I should even have taken a morbid pleasure in watching
the light in her window o' nights, if it had been at all practicable.

CHAPTER VIII

A Fight and a Race for Life.

It was between the spring round-up and the fall, while the boys were
employed in desultory fashion at the home ranch, breaking