sly grim smile.

"I reckon that rattler was fooled last night," he said. "But if
foolin' him had been left to me I expect I'd have made a bad job of it.
But I'm thinkin' that he done his little old dyin' when the sun went
down last night. An' I'm still here. An' I'll keep right on, usin'
his brothers an' sisters for targets--when I think that I'm needin'
practice."

"Then you killed the snake?"

"Why sure, ma'am. I wasn't figgerin' to let that rattler go a-fannin'
right on to hook someone else. That'd be encouragin' his trade."

She laughed, evidently pleased over his earnestness. "Oh, I see," she
said. "Then you were not angry merely because he bit you? You killed
him to keep him from attacking other persons?"

He smiled. "I sure was some angry," he returned. "An' I reckon that
just at the time I wasn't thinkin' much about other people. I was
havin' plenty to keep me busy."

"But you killed him. How?"

"Why I shot him, ma'am. Was you thinkin' that I beat him to death with
somethin'?"

Her lips twitched again, the corners turning suggestively inward. But
now he caught her looking at his guns. She looked from them to his
face. "All cowboys do not carry two guns," she said suddenly.

He looked gravely at her. "Well, no, ma'am, they don't. There's some
that claim carryin' two guns is clumsy. But there's been times when I
found them right convenient."

She fell silent now, regarding her sewing. A quizzical smile had
reached his face. This exchange of talk had developed the fact that
she was a stranger to the country. No Western girl would have made her
remark about the guns.

He did not know whether or not he was pleased over the discovery.
Certain subtle signs about her had warned him in the beginning that she
was different from the other women of his acquaintance, but he had not
thought of her being a stranger here, of her coming here from some
other section of the country--the East, for instance.

Her being from the East would account for many things. First, it would
make plain to him why she had smiled several times during their talks,
over things in which he had been able to see no humor. Then it would
answer the question that had formed in his mind concerning the fluency
of her speech. Western girls that he had met had not attained that
ease and poise which he saw was hers so naturally. Yet in spite of
this accomplishment she was none the less a woman--demure eyed, ready
to bl