along into the
early fall before he had them thinned down to calves and cows not ready
for market.

He shaved and smoothed his weathered face, turning his eyes now and
again to his hairy vest with a feeling of affection in him for the
garment that neither its worth nor its beauty warranted. Sentimental
reasons always outweigh sensible ones as long as a man is young.

He rode along the fence next morning on his way to the herd, debating
whether he should leave a note on the wire. He was not in such a soft
and sentimental mood this morning, for sense had rallied to him and
pointed out the impossibility of harmony between himself and one so
nearly related to a man who had attempted to burn him alive. It seemed
to him now that the recollection of those poignant moments would rise to
stand between them, no matter how gentle or far removed from the source
of her being she might appear.

These gloomy speculations rose and left him like a flock of somber birds
as he lifted the slope. Grace Kerr herself was riding homeward, just
mounting the hill over which she must pass in a moment and disappear. He
unhooked the wire and rode after her. At the hilltop she stopped,
unaware of his coming, and looked back. He waved his hat; she waited.

"Have you been sick, Duke?" she inquired, after greetings, looking him
over with concern.

"My horse bit me," said he, passing it off with that old stock
pleasantry of the range, which covered anything and everything that a
man didn't want to explain.

"I missed you along here," she said. She swept him again with that slow,
puzzled look of inquiry, her eyes coming back to his face in a frank,
unembarrassed stare. "Oh, I know what it is now! You're dressed like you
were that day at Misery. I couldn't make it out for a minute."

She was not wearing her mannish garb this morning, but divided skirts of
corduroy and a white waist with a bit of bright color at the neck. Her
white sombrero was the only masculine touch about her, and that rather
added to her quick, dark prettiness.

"You were wearing a white waist the first time I saw you," he said.

"This one," she replied, touching it with simple motion of full
identification.

Neither of them mentioned the mutual recognition on the day she had been
caught cutting the fence. They talked of commonplace things, as youth is
constrained to do when its heart and mind are centered on something else
which burns within it, the flame of which it canno