tartly, "only
for you having my dress, I'd have gone straight back home. Do brothers
always act like this?"

"Search me," said Weary, shaking his head. "Anyway, yuh better talk to
Glory about it. He appears to be running this show. When I rode out
to your place, I didn't have any bit in his mouth at all. Coming back,
I've got one of Joe Meeker's teething rings, that wouldn't hold a pet
turkey. But we're going to the dance, Miss Satterly. Don't you worry
none about that."

Miss Satterly laughed and rode ahead of them. "I'm going," she
announced firmly. "It's leap year, and I think I can rustle a partner
if you decide to sit and look through that gate all night."

"You'll need your pretty dress. Glory ain't much used to escorting
young ladies, but he's a gentleman; we're coming, all right."

It was strange, perhaps, that Glory should miss the chance of proving
his master a liar, but he nevertheless ambled decorously to Dry Lake
and did nothing more unseemly than nipping occasionally at the neck of
the little gray.

That is how Weary learned that large, brown eyes do not look sidelong
at a man after the manner of long, heavy-lidded blue ones; and that,
also, is how he came to throw up his head and deny to himself and his
world that he ever was shy of women.

PART TWO

Weary rode stealthily around the corner of the little, frame
school-house and was not disappointed. The schoolma'am was sitting
unconventionally upon the doorstep, her shoulder turned to him and her
face turned to the trail by which a man naturally would be supposed to
approach the place. Her hair was shining darkly in the sun and the
shorter locks were blowing about her face in a downright tantalizing
fashion; they made a man want to brush them back and kiss the spot they
were caressing so wantonly. She was humming a tune softly to herself.
Weary caught the words, sung absently, under her breath:

"Didn't make no blunder--yuh couldn't confuse him.
A perfect wonder, yuh had to choose him!"

The schoolma'am was addicted to coon songs of the period.

She seemed to be very busy about something and Weary, craning his neck
to see over her shoulder, wondered what. Also, he wished he knew what
she was thinking about, and he hoped her thoughts were not remote from
himself. Just then Glory showed unmistakable and malicious intentions
of sneezing, and Weary, catching a glimpse of something in Miss
Satterly's hand, hastened to make