could no more do what you do than a lame duck can lead a ballet.
I suppose it is because I have had to live with a lot of ailing women all
my life that I feel as I do toward you. I worship your health and
strength. I really do. Your care of me on that trip was very sweet--and
yet it stung."

"I didn't mean to hurt you."

"I know you didn't, and I'm not complaining. I'm only wishing I could
come here and be 'bossed' by you until I could hold my own against any
weather. You make me feel just as I used to do when I went to a circus
and watched the athletes, men and women, file past me in the sawdust.
They seemed like demigods. As I sit here now I have a fierce desire to be
as well, as strong, as full of life as you are. I hate being thin and
timid. You have the physical perfection that queens ought to have."

Her face was flushed with inward heat as she listened to his strange
words, which sprang, she feared, from the heart of a man hopelessly ill;
but she again protested. "It's all right to be able to throw a rope and
ride a mean horse, but you have got something else--something I can never
get. Learning is a thousand times finer than muscle."

"Learning does not compensate for nine-inch shoulders and spindle legs,"
he answered. "But I'm going to get well. Knowing you has given me renewed
desire to be a man. I'm going to ride and rough it, and sleep out of
doors till I can follow you anywhere. You'll be proud of me before the
month is out. But I'm going to cut the Meeker outfit. I won't subject
myself to their vulgarities another day. Why should I? It's false pride
in me to hang on up there any longer."

"Of course you can come here," she said. "Mother will be glad to have
you, although our ranch isn't a bit pretty. Perhaps father will send you
out with one of the rangers as a fire-guard. I'll ask him to-night."

"I wish you would. I like these foresters. What I've seen of them. I
wouldn't mind serving under a man like Landon. He's fine."

Upon this pleasant conference Cliff Belden unexpectedly burst. Pushing
the door open with a slam, he confronted Berrie with dark and angry
face.

"Why, Cliff, where did you come from?" she asked, rising in some
confusion. "I didn't hear you ride up."

"Apparently not," he sneeringly answered. "I reckon you were too much
occupied."

She tried to laugh away his black mood. "That's right, I was. I'm chief
cook to-day. Come in and sit down. Mother's gone to town, and I'm playing