til I'd fail to show up for meals. If you view it from that
angle you can see I'm setting on the powder can."

She did see it, but had not so clearly realized it till he pointed it
out, and for the first time she wavered in her conviction that he had
come simply to deprive her of her rights. But the thought that her
father would not easily have willed away the home place to another
without being unduly influenced served to reinstate her distrust along
with a vague resentment for his having shaken it by throwing himself so
openly on her mercy.

"You probably thought to overcome that by reaching the point the whole
thing so patently aims for," she said. "And you calculated
well--arriving at a time when we'd be alone for a week. The whole
scheme was based on that idea and I've been patiently wondering why you
don't rush matters and invite me to marry you."

He rose and flicked the ash from his cigarette into the fireplace.

"I do invite you--right now," he said, and in her surprise she left her
chair and stood facing him. "I'd like real well to have you, Billie."

"That's the final proof," she said. "I'm surprised that you didn't
tell me the first day."

"So am I," he said.

She found no answer for this but stood silent, knowing that she had
suddenly become afraid of him.

"And that's the living truth," he affirmed. "Other men have loved you
the first day. You know men well enough to be certain that I wouldn't
be tied to one woman for the sake of owning a few head of cows--not if
I didn't want her for herself." He waved an arm toward the door.
"There's millions of miles of sage just outside," he said. "And
millions of cows--and girls."

He moved across to her and stood almost touching her, looking down into
her face. When Slade had stood so a few days past she had been coldly
indifferent except for a shiver of distaste at the thought of his
touching her. Before Harris she felt a weakening, a need of support,
and she leaned back from him and placed one hand behind her on the
table.

"You judge for yourself whether a man wouldn't be right foolish--with
all those things I mentioned being right outside to call him--to marry
a woman he didn't want for herself, because she had a few hundred head
of cows." He smiled down at her. "Don't pull back from me, Billie; I
won't lay a finger on you. But now do you think it's you I want--or
the little old Three Bar?"

"You can prove it," she said at last. "Pro