s.

Women's beauty he admired, but their virtue he revered not at all; yet
he had a paradoxical respect for that quality, whenever he encountered
it, that first begat and ultimately conserved in him that anomalous
chivalry of the frontier which impels a man to the espousal of the under
dog's cause without hesitation. He would have fought instantly and to
the death for a woman insulted; but he would just as readily have sprang
to the aid of a man battling against unfair odds. Of conventionality he
had only a contemptuous disregard, taking the goods the gods gave
him--when altogether to his fastidious taste--when and where they
offered. The very recklessness displayed, and its all too frequent
indulgence and participation in by the objects of its incitation, had
made him calloused, and cynical to a degree very disastrous to a man of
his tender years. For at twenty-six it is befitting to take off one's
hat to a petticoat hanging on a clothes line, after the traditional
habit of Lord Chesterfield.

Let us not sit too hardly in judgment upon this red-corpuscled young
savage. The fires of youth burn fiercely into the natural sequence of
maturity's steady glow and senility's ashes. A boy's will is
proverbially the wind's will, and youth must have its fling. In a land
where every man is a law unto himself it is hard to fix limitations and
the tide of license rolls high. There is no caste on the frontier, and
the range of passion is as wide as the boundless horizon. He had been
tenderly received in high places before, and so there was nothing
incongruous in his quick desire for Grace Carter.

Something of this was passing through his mind now, but somehow it
savored of sophistry and he knit his brows. He had said or done nothing
to which the most hypercritical could logically take exceptions, yet her
resentment had been spontaneous and unmistakable.

"_Honi soit qui mal y pense!_" he muttered, and again his eyes held that
unlovely light. "One who divines, must feel--and she is only a woman
after all." But the conclusion was not altogether satisfying and he
shook his head. The cigarette was suddenly bitter in his mouth and he
threw it away impatiently.

"No, damned if I believe that, either! I don't know what I believe.
Guess I better hit the feathers." He rolled into bed, blinked sleepily
at the stars for a few minutes, and with an indifferent "What the hell
do I care, anyway!" fell asleep.

And in the hammock seven miles