ell him part of the ranch, and he lets Mr. S. Behrman and
Mr. Ruggles just use him."

"Right. I thought you wouldn't be keen on him."

There was a long pause. The buckskin began blowing among the pebbles,
nosing for grass, and Annixter shifted his cigar to the other corner of
his mouth.

"Pretty place," he muttered, looking around him. Then he added: "Miss
Hilma, see here, I want to have a kind of talk with you, if you don't
mind. I don't know just how to say these sort of things, and if I get
all balled up as I go along, you just set it down to the fact that I've
never had any experience in dealing with feemale girls; understand? You
see, ever since the barn dance--yes, and long before then--I've been
thinking a lot about you. Straight, I have, and I guess you know it.
You're about the only girl that I ever knew well, and I guess," he
declared deliberately, "you're about the only one I want to know.
It's my nature. You didn't say anything that time when we stood there
together and Delaney was playing the fool, but, somehow, I got the idea
that you didn't want Delaney to do for me one little bit; that if he'd
got me then you would have been sorrier than if he'd got any one else.
Well, I felt just that way about you. I would rather have had him shoot
any other girl in the room than you; yes, or in the whole State. Why, if
anything should happen to you, Miss Hilma--well, I wouldn't care to go
on with anything. S. Behrman could jump Quien Sabe, and welcome. And
Delaney could shoot me full of holes whenever he got good and ready.
I'd quit. I'd lay right down. I wouldn't care a whoop about anything any
more. You are the only girl for me in the whole world. I didn't think so
at first. I didn't want to. But seeing you around every day, and seeing
how pretty you were, and how clever, and hearing your voice and all,
why, it just got all inside of me somehow, and now I can't think of
anything else. I hate to go to San Francisco, or Sacramento, or Visalia,
or even Bonneville, for only a day, just because you aren't there, in
any of those places, and I just rush what I've got to do so as I can
get back here. While you were away that Christmas time, why, I was as
lonesome as--oh, you don't know anything about it. I just scratched off
the days on the calendar every night, one by one, till you got back.
And it just comes to this, I want you with me all the time. I want you
should have a home that's my home, too. I want to take care