led and reared her.

His gaze annoyed her, without her quite knowing why. "I wish you
wouldn't look at me all the time," she told him with the boyish
directness that still occasionally lent a tang to her speech.

"And if I can't help it?" he laughed.

"Fiddlesticks! You don't have to say pretty things to me, Brill Healy,"
she told him.

"I don't say them because I have to."

"Then I wish you wouldn't say them at all. There's no sense in it when
you've known a girl eighteen years."

"Known and loved her eighteen years. It's a long time, Phyl."

Her eyes rained light derision on him. "It would be if it were true. But
then one has to forget truth when one is sentimental, I reckon."

"I'm not sentimental. I tell you I'm in love," he answered.

"Yes, Brill. With yourself. I've known that a long time, but not quite
eighteen years," she mocked.

"With you," he made answer, and something of sullenness had by this time
crept into his voice. "I've got as much right to love you as any one
else, haven't I? As much right as that durned waddy, Keller?"

Fire flashed in her eyes. "If you want to know, I despise you when you
talk that way."

The anger grew in him. "What way? When I say anything against the
rustler, do you mean? Think I'm blind? Think I can't see how you're
running after him, and making a fool of yourself about him?"

"How dare you talk that way to me?" she flamed, and gave her surprised
pony a sharp stroke with the quirt.

Five minutes later the bronchos fell again to a walk, and Healy took up
the conversation where it had dropped.

"No use flying out like that, Phyl. I only say what any one can see.
Take a look at the facts. You meet up with him making his getaway after
he's all but caught rustling. Now, what do you do?"

"I don't believe he was rustling at all."

"Course you don't _believe_ it. That proves just what I was saying."

"Jim doesn't believe it, either."

"Yeager's opinion don't have any weight with me. I want to tell you
right now that the boys are getting mighty leary of Jim. He's getting
too thick with that Bear Creek bunch."

"Brill Healy, I never saw anybody so bigoted and pig-headed as you are,"
the girl spoke out angrily. "Any one with eyes in his head could see
that Jim is as straight as a string. He couldn't be crooked if he
tried. Long as you've known him I should think you wouldn't need to be
told that."

"Oh, _you_ say so," he growled sullenly.

"Everybody says so. J