' better, now it's mornin'?"

The girl made no answer. Hastily averting her eyes, she rode on in
silence, lips pressed together and chin a little tilted.

"Sulking, eh?" drawled Lynch. "What's the good? Yuh can't keep that sort
of thing up forever. After we're--married--"

He paused significantly. The girl's lip quivered but she set her teeth
into it determinedly. Presently, with an effort, she forced herself to
speak.

"Aren't you rather wasting time trying to--to frighten me with that sort
of rubbish?" she asked coldly. "In these days marriage isn't something
that can be forced."

The man's laugh was not agreeable. "Oh, is that so?" he inquired. "You're
likely to learn a thing or two before long, I'll say."

His tone was so carelessly confident, so entirely assured, that in an
instant her pitiful little pretense of courage was swept away.

"It isn't so!" she cried, turning on him with wide eyes and quivering
lips. "You couldn't-- There isn't a--real clergyman who'd do--do such a
thing. No one could force me to--to-- Why, I'd rather die than--"

She paused, choking. Lynch shrugged his shoulders.

"Oh, no, yuh wouldn't," he drawled. "Dyin' is mighty easy to talk about,
but when yuh get right down to it, I reckon you'd change yore mind. I
don't see why yore so dead set against me," he added. "I ain't so hard to
look at, am I? An' with me as yore husband, things will--will be mighty
different on the ranch. You'll never have to pinch an' worry like yuh do
now."

Tears blinded her, and, turning away quickly, she stared unseeing through
a blurring haze, fighting desperately for at least a semblance of
self-control. He was so confident, so terribly sure of himself! What if he
could do the thing he said? She did not see how such a ghastly horror
could be possible; but then, what did she know of conditions in the place
to which he was taking her?

Suddenly, as she struggled against that overpowering weight of misery and
despair, her thoughts flew longingly to another man, and for an instant
she seemed to look into his eyes--whimsical, a little tender, with a faint
touch of suppressed longing in their clear gray depths.

"Buck! Oh, Buck!" she yearned under her breath.

Then of a sudden she felt a hand on her bridle and became aware that Lynch
was speaking.

"We'll stop here for a bit," he informed her briefly. "You'd better get
down and stretch yoreself."

She looked at him, a little puzzled. "I'm quite comfort