ertainly won't."
The memory of little Bangs, his adoring gaze fastened on her face, was
uppermost in her mind and brought a lump to her throat. "I hope he
gets them all."

"Billie, let me take you away from all this," Deane urged again. "Let
me give you the things every girl should have--shut all the rough spots
out of your path. I want to give you the things every girl needs to
round out her life--a home and love and shelter."

Shelter! Slade's words recurred to her: "A soft front lawn to range
in."

"This is what I need," she said and waved an arm in a comprehensive
sweep. Two hands, recently arrived, were unpacking before the bunk
house. A third was shoeing a horse near the blacksmith shop. The mule
teams were plowing in the flats. A line of chap-clad men roosted as so
many crows on the top bar of the corral, mildly interested in the
performance of another who twirled a rope in a series of amazing
tricks. "That's what I need; all that," she said. "And you're asking
me to give it up."

"But it's not the life for a girl," he insisted.

"You've told me a hundred times that I was different from other girls.
But now you're wanting me to be like all the rest. Where would the
difference be then?" she asked a little wistfully. "Why can't you go
on liking me the way I am, instead of making me over?"

But Carlos Deane could not see. It was his last evening alone with her
and after the meal they rode across the hills through the moonlight.
In that hour she was very near to doing as he wished. If only he had
suggested that she come to him as soon as the Three Bar was once more a
prosperous brand; had only pointed out how she could spend months of
each year on the old home ranch,--then he might have won his point
without waiting. But that is not the way of man toward woman. His
plea was that she leave all this behind--for him. And his hold was not
quite strong enough to induce her to give up every link of the life she
had loved for long years before Carlos Deane had been even a part of it.

"I can't tell you now," she said as they rode back to the corrals.
"Not now. It would take something out of me--the vital part--if I had
to leave the old Three Bar in the shape it's in today. It's sort of
like deserting a crippled child."

The next day her stand was unaltered and in the evening, when the whole
Three Bar personnel swung to their saddles and headed for the frolic at
Brill's, Deane had been unable to