, that's all right."

For a long time they sat there under the shade of the great trestle,
their arms about each other, speaking only at intervals. An hour passed.
The buckskin, finding no feed to her taste, took the trail stablewards,
the bridle dragging. Annixter let her go. Rather than to take his arm
from around Hilma's waist he would have lost his whole stable. At last,
however, he bestirred himself and began to talk. He thought it time to
formulate some plan of action.

"Well, now, Hilma, what are we going to do?"

"Do?" she repeated. "Why, must we do anything? Oh, isn't this enough?"

"There's better ahead," he went on. "I want to fix you up somewhere
where you can have a bit of a home all to yourself. Let's see;
Bonneville wouldn't do. There's always a lot of yaps about there
that know us, and they would begin to cackle first off. How about San
Francisco. We might go up next week and have a look around. I would find
rooms you could take somewheres, and we would fix 'em up as lovely as
how-do-you-do."

"Oh, but why go away from Quien Sabe?" she protested. "And, then, so
soon, too. Why must we have a wedding trip, now that you are so busy?
Wouldn't it be better--oh, I tell you, we could go to Monterey after
we were married, for a little week, where mamma's people live, and then
come back here to the ranch house and settle right down where we are and
let me keep house for you. I wouldn't even want a single servant."

Annixter heard and his face grew troubled.

"Hum," he said, "I see."

He gathered up a handful of pebbles and began snapping them carefully
into the creek. He fell thoughtful. Here was a phase of the affair he
had not planned in the least. He had supposed all the time that Hilma
took his meaning. His old suspicion that she was trying to get a hold on
him stirred again for a moment. There was no good of such talk as
that. Always these feemale girls seemed crazy to get married, bent on
complicating the situation.

"Isn't that best?" said Hilma, glancing at him.

"I don't know," he muttered gloomily.

"Well, then, let's not. Let's come right back to Quien Sabe without
going to Monterey. Anything that you want I want."

"I hadn't thought of it in just that way," he observed.

"In what way, then?"

"Can't we--can't we wait about this marrying business?"

"That's just it," she said gayly. "I said it was too soon. There would
be so much to do between whiles. Why not say at the end of the sum