to-day would feel if she discovered she had been telling one of the men of
the Merrimac to ride behind!"

"They would not need to be told," Mrs. Thorne interjected.

"No, that is the difference; but discipline did not appeal to me then;
recklessness did. Every man on the place had taken sides on the Wyoming
question; feeling ran high. Some of them had friends and relatives among
the victims. Yet this man in hiding had tossed me his name to play with,
not even asking for my silence, though it was the price of his life, and
all in a light-hearted contempt for the curious ways of the 'tony set,' as
he would have called us.

"I signed to him one evening to ride up. 'I want you to talk to me,' I
said. 'Tell me about the cattle war.'

"'Miss Benedet forgets--my place is behind.' He touched his hat and fell
back again. Lesson for lesson--we were quits. I made no further attempt to
corrupt my own pupil.

"We rode in silence after that, but I was never without the sense of his
ironical presence. I was conscious of showing off before him. I wished him
to see that I could ride. Fences and ditches, rough or smooth, he never
interfered with my wildest pace. I could not extract from him a look of
surprise, far less the admiration that I wanted. What was a girl's riding
to him? He knew a pace--all the paces--that I could never follow. I felt
the absurdity of our mutual position, its utter artificiality, and how it
must strike him.

"In the absence of words between us, externals spoke with greater force.