s no exception to the
general rule; her whole mentality had been concentrated on this one
achievement, and here at the very outset the fair fabric of her dreams
was crumbling. She was oppressed with a sense of impending defeat that
grew more and more disquieting as she recalled the stories she had heard
of his indomitable will and pertinacity of purpose. She had been much
impressed by a remark made by old Hank Williams on the morning of their
first encounter, "Ken allus gits what he goes after!"

At the time she deemed it a very grand, almost heroic attribute, but
just now it was fraught with a new significance. Something in her
cogitations sent the blood to her face, then it receded, leaving her
pale. She pushed the untasted food away impatiently and rose from the
table. Going swiftly to her room, she took from between the leaves of
her diary a cluster of withered flowers and stepped to the open window.
In the very act of their contemptuous casting away she hesitated
irresolutely, looked at them once more compassionately and replaced them
in the morocco-bound booklet. Then with an air of renewed determination
she returned to her breakfast and ate everything comestible in sight.

That night when Douglass returned, he bore in his arms a tiny antelope
kid which he laughingly entrusted to her tender mercies. In his ride
over the range he had come upon one of the pitiful little tragedies
common to the great Outdoors with its unending struggle of the weak
against the strong and merciless. In a little hollow of the foothills
its mother, hamstrung by a pair of wolves and exhausted by her gallant
fight against the inevitable, was making a last frantic effort to
defend her offspring cowering between her feet. The revolver flashed
twice vengefully and then a third time mercifully, for the poor doe's
condition was hopeless. But of this third shot Douglass said nothing to
Miss Carter, simply saying that the doe had succumbed to her injuries.
Neither did he deem it advisable to tell her that with the economy and
thrift inseparable from plainsmen, he had sent the carcass of the
martyred mother to one of his outlying camps to eke out its larder, and
so save the otherwise necessary sacrifice of a valuable yearling for
camp meat. Nor did he mention the fact that this had occurred quite
early in the afternoon, necessitating his "packing" the helpless kid
about on his saddle for many weary miles.

The girl's eyes had filled at his simpl