"I made the sudden discovery," he said, affecting a laziness he was
very far from feeling, "that you were too near being a young woman to
go traipsing around the country with me, living at shacks, and having
no company but gambling sharks, and that class of cattle."

"Oh, did you? What else?"

"Only that our tempers don't exactly seem to jibe, and the two of us
can't be bosses in the same ranch."

She looked at him contemptuously, swinging her body farther around on
the rock, and sitting stiffly, the color on her cheeks deepening
through the sunburn. "Now see here, Mister Bob Hampton, you're a
fraud, and you know it! Did n't I understand exactly who you was, and
what was your business? Did n't I know you was a gambler, and a 'bad
man'? Didn't I tell you plain enough out yonder,"--and her voice
faltered slightly,--"just what I thought about you? Good Lord! I have
n't been begging to stick with you, have I? I just didn't know which
way to turn, or who to turn to, after dad was killed, and you sorter
hung on to me, and I let it go the way I supposed you wanted it. But I
'm not particularly stuck on your style, let me tell you, and I reckon
there 's plenty of ways for me to get along. Only first, I propose to
understand what your little game is. You don't throw down your hand
like that without some reason."

Hampton sat up, spurred into instant admiration by such independence of
spirit. "You grow rather good-looking, Kid, when you get hot, but you
go at things half-cocked, and you 've got to get over it. That's the
whole trouble--you 've never been trained, and I would n't make much of
a trainer for a high-strung filly like you. Ever remember your mother?"