nly
determined that she would see in them the guile which must be there.
Surely a man could not do the things which this man so brazenly did, and
not show something of it! And she saw a glance as steady as her own,
eyes as clear and filled with a very frank admiration. In spite of her,
her color rose and her eyes wavered a little. Then she noticed that Mrs.
Sturgis's keen eyes were upon her, and swiftly drove the expression from
her own eyes and returned Thornton's greeting indifferently. Some day
her uncle would accuse this man, but she did not care to give her
personal affair over to the tongue of gossip, nor did she care to have
her name linked in any way with Buck Thornton's.

"May I have this dance, Miss Waverly?"

He had put out his arm as though her affirmative were a foregone
conclusion. She stared at him, wondering where were the limits to this
man's audacity. Then, before she could reply, Mrs. Sturgis had answered
for her. For Mrs. Sturgis was a born match maker, Buck was like a son to
her motherly heart, Winifred Waverly was the "sweetest little thing"
she had ever seen, and they had in them the making of such a couple as
Mrs. Sturgis couldn't find every day of the week.

"Go 'long with you, Buck Thornton!" she cried, making a monumental
failure of the frown with which she tried to draw her placid brows.
"Here I thought all the time you was goin' to ask me!"

Then she jerked him by the arm, dragging him nearer, playfully pushed
the girl toward him, and before she well knew what had happened Winifred
found herself in Thornton's arms, whirling with him to the merry-fiddled
music, putting out her little slipper by the side of his big boot to the
step of the rye-waltz. And Mrs. Sturgis, drawing her twinkling eyes away
from them and turning upon Ben Broderick, who had arrived just too late,
with as much malice in her smile as she knew how to put into it,
remarked meaningly,

"A little slow, Mr. Broderick! You got to keep awake when there's a man
like Buck around."

And she seemed very much pleased with the look in Broderick's eyes, a
look of blended surprise and irritation.

"Thornton and her uncle are not just exactly friends," he retorted
coolly.

"If they was," she flung back at him, "I'd think a heap sight more of
ol' Ben Pollard!"

Mrs. Sturgis's manoeuvre had so completely taken the girl by surprise
that as she floated away in the cowboy's arms she was for a little
undecided what to do. She did n