ot choose to give him sight of her, and so he talked and talked
to Dill, and even to Mama Joy, hoping that Miss Bridger could hear
him and know that he wasn't worrying a darned bit. He did not consider
that he had said anything so terrible. What had she gone on like that
about her father for, if she couldn't stand for any one siding in with
her? Maybe he had put his sympathy a little too strong, but that is
the way men handle each other. She ought to know he wasn't sorry she
was there. Why, of _course_ she knew that! The girl wasn't a fool, and
she must know a fellow would be plumb tickled to have her around every
day. Well, anyway, he wasn't going to begin by letting her lead him
around by the nose, and he wasn't going to crumple down on his knees
and tell her to please walk all over him.

"Well, anyway," he summed up at bedtime with a somewhat doubtful
satisfaction, "I guess she's kinda got over the notion that I'm so
blame _comfortable_--like I was an old grandpa-setting-in-the-corner.
She's _got_ to get over it, by thunder! I ain't got to that point yet;
hell, no! I should say I hadn't!"

It is a fact that when he rode away just after sunrise next morning
(he would have given much if duty and his pride had permitted him to
linger a while) no one could have accused him of being in any degree a
comfortable young man. For his last sight of Miss Bridger had been the
flutter of her when she disappeared through the stable door.

CHAPTER XIII.

_Billy Meets the Pilgrim._

The weeks that followed did not pass as quickly as before for Billy
Boyle, nor did raking the range with his riders bring quite as keen
a satisfaction with life. Always, when he rode apart in the soft haze
and watched the sky-line shimmer and dance toward him and then retreat
like a teasing maid, his thoughts wandered from the range and the
cattle and the men who rode at his bidding and rested with one slim
young woman who puzzled and tantalized him and caused him more mental
discomfort than he had ever known in his life before that night when
she entered so unexpectedly the line-camp and his life. He scarcely
knew just how he did feel toward her; sometimes he hungered for
her with every physical and mental fibre and was tempted to leave
everything and go to her. Times there were when he resented deeply
her treatment of him and repeated to himself the resolution not to lie
down and let her walk all over him just because he liked her.

When