own paper and deftly rolling his smoke.

"Has it been on your mind--what I was telling you a few nights back,
about how much I was loving you?" he asked.

"You had your chance to prove it by going away," she said, "and
refused; so why bring it up again? The next two years will be hard
enough without my having to listen to that."

"Our families must have been real set on throwing us together," he
observed. "I was cut off without a dime myself--unless I spent two
full years on the Three Bar."

She was angry with herself for believing him sincere, for being
convinced that he too, as he had several times intimated, was tied in
much the same fashion as herself. The explanation came to her in an
illuminating flash. The elder Harris must have nursed a lifelong
enmity against her father, who had believed him the most devoted friend
on earth.

She had often heard the tale of how her parent had, in all
friendliness, followed old Bill Harris step by step from Dodge City to
the Platte, to old Fort Laramie and finally to the present Three Bar
range. Perhaps the one so followed had felt that Cal Warren was but
the hated symbol of the whole clan of squatters who had driven him from
place to place and eventually forced him to relinquish his hope of
seeing the Three Bar brand on a hundred thousand cows; that his
friendliness had been simulated, his vindictiveness nursed and finally
consummated by leaving his affairs in such fashion that his son must
carry on the work his trickery had begun.

The voice of Waddles reached them. He was announcing a half-day of
rest, according to her orders.

"It's kill-time for the rest of the day," he stated. "Make the most of
it."

For three weeks past, excepting for the trip to Brill's, the men had
toiled incessantly, breakfasting before sunup and seeking their bunks
long after dark. Some immediately turned to their bed rolls to make up
lost sleep. Others repaired to the stream to wash out extra articles
of soiled clothing before taking their rest.

Harris resumed where he had broken off some five minutes before.

"And I'd have tossed it off, as I told you once, if the Three Bar girl
had turned out to be any except you. You've had a tough problem to
work out, girl," he said. "I sold out my little Box L outfit for more
than it was worth--and figured to stop the leak at the Three Bar and
put the old brand on its feet."

His calm assurance on this point exasperated the girl.

"Ho