Ben Blair

Blair was silent a moment; then he said, "I promised to return whenever you wished, but I've not said what I wanted to say yet."

Florence looked at the speaker with feigned surprise. "Is that so? I'm very curious to hear!"

Ben returned the look deliberately. "You'd like to hear now what I have to say?"

The girl's breath came more quickly, but she persisted in her banter. "I can scarcely wait!"

The line of the youth's big jaw tightened, "I won't keep you in suspense any longer then. First of all, I want to relate a little personal history. I was eight years old, as you know, when I was taken into the Box R ranch. In those eight years, as far as I can remember, not one person except Mr. Rankin ever called at my mother's home."

Again the girl felt a thrill of anticipation, but the brown eyes opened archly. "You must have kept a big fierce dog, or--or something."

"No, that was not the reason."

"I can't imagine what it could be, then."

"The explanation is simple. My mother and Tom Blair were never married."

Swiftly the color mounted into Florence's cheeks, and she drew up her horse with a jerk.

"So that is what you brought me out here to tell me!" she blazed.

Ben drew up likewise, and wheeled his pony facing hers.

"I beg your pardon, but I'm not to blame for the way I told you--of myself. You forced it. For once in my life at least, Florence, I'm in dead earnest to-day."

The girl hesitated. Tears of anger, or of something else, came into her eyes. "I'm going home," she announced briefly, and turned back the way they had come.

The man silently wheeled his buckskin and for five minutes, ten minutes, they rode toward home together.

"Florence," said the youth steadily, "I had something more I wished to say to you; will you listen?"

No answer--only the sound of the solid steps of the thoroughbred and the daintier tread of the mustang.

"Florence," he repeated, "I asked you a question."

The girl's face was turned away. "Oh, you are cruel!" she said.

Ben touched his pony, advanced, caught the bridle of the girl's horse, and brought both to a standstill. The girl did not turn her head to look at him, but she did not resist. Deliberately the man dismounted, loosed the rolled blanket he carried back of his saddle, spread it upon the ground, then looked fairly up into her brown eyes.

"Florence," he said, as he held out his hand to assist her to dismount, "I've something I wish very much to say to you. Won't you listen?"