Well, they ain't none of 'em got their brand on me. If I did shoot up Gum Smith's joint it ain't no hair offen none of them."

The girl wondered if he really was ignorant of the suspicions directed against him, or if he took this means to make her believe that the cause of the altered attitude toward him was his drunken gunplay in the sheriffs saloon.

"I was right sorry about that, Miss," he blurted suddenly. "I never aimed for to do it. I wasn't goin' to drink too much no more after what I'd promised you. I'm right sorry. Do you think that, maybe, you-you might forgive me-and give me another chance?"

His voice was pleading and he was very much in earnest. The girl knew how difficult it was for a rough man like Bull to say what he had just said and she felt a sudden compassion for him.

"It made me sorry, too, Bull," she said. "I trusted you and I hated to be so disappointed in you."

"Please don't say you don't trust me, Miss," he begged. "I want you to trust me more'n anything else."

"I want to trust you, Bull," and then, impulsively: "I do trust you!"

He reached across the interval between them and laid his rough hand upon her soft one.

"I love you, Diana," he said, very simply and with a quiet dignity that was unmarred by any hesitancy or embarrassment.

She started to speak, but he silenced her with a gesture.

"Don't say anything about it, please," he urged. "I don't expect you to love me; but there's nothing wrong about my loving you. I just wanted you to know it so that you'd always know where I stood and that you could always call on me for anything. With yer dad an' all the other men around that loves you there isn't much likelihood that you'll ever need me more'n another, but it makes me feel better to know that you know now. We won't talk about it no more, Miss. We both understand. It's the reason I didn't quit when yer dad busted me."

"I'm glad you told me, Bull," she said. "It's the greatest honor that any man can bestow upon a girl. I don't love any man, Bull, that way; but if ever I do he'll know it without my telling him. I'll do something that will prove it-a girl always does. Some times, though, the men are awfully blind, they say."

"I wouldn't be blind," said Bull. "I'd know it, I think, if a girl loved me."

"The right one will, some day," she assured him.

He shook his head. "I hope so, Miss."

She flushed, sensing the unintentional double Entendre he had caught in her words. She wondered why she flushed.

They rode on in silence. She was sorry that Bull loved her, but she was glad that, loving her, he had told her of his love. He was just a common cowhand, unlettered, rough, and occasionally uncouth, but of these things she did not think, for she had known no other sort, except her father and an occasional visitor from the East, since childhood. Had she cared for him she would not have been ashamed. She looked up at him with a smile.

"Don't call me 'Miss,' Bull, please-I hate it."

"You want me to call you by your first name?" he inquired.

"The other men do," she said, "and you did---a moment ago."

"It slipped out that time." He grinned sheepishly.

"I like it."

"All right Miss," he said.

The girl laughed aloud, joyishly.

"All right, Diana, I mean," lie corrected himself.

"That's better."

So Diana Henders, who was really a very sensible girl, instead of merely playing with fire, made a big one of a little one, all very unintentionally, for how was she to know that to Bull the calling of her Diana instead of Miss was almost as provocative to his love as Would have been the personal contact of a kiss to an ordinary man?

As they approached the ranch house at the end of their ride they saw a buckboard to which two bronchos were harnessed hitched to the tie rail beneath the cottonwoods outside the office door.

"Whose outfit is that?" asked Diana. "I never saw it before."

"The Wainrights from the north side o' the hills. I seen 'em in town about a week ago."

"Oh, yes, I've heard of them. They're from the East. Mr.