The Fighting Shepherdess

"You're so unexpectedly sweet!" he cried, as he again drew her close to him. "I've never forgotten that about you." He laughed softly as he added, "I can't understand why everyone that knows you isn't in love with you."

"There's no one else who has ever seen this side of me. I am not even likable to most people."

"It isn't so! But if it were, it doesn't make any difference, for you're going to marry me--you're going home with me and live a woman's life--the kind for which you were intended."

The radiance that illuminated her face transformed and glorified it.

She was woman--all woman, at heart--he had not been mistaken, he thought rapturously as he looked at her.

She stared at him wide-eyed, dazzled by the picture as she breathed rather than whispered: "To be with you always--never to be lonely again--to have some one that cared really when I was sick or tired or heavy-hearted--never to be savage and bitter and vindictive, but to be glad every morning just to be living, and to know that each day would be a little nicer than the last one! It would be that way, wouldn't it, Hughie?"

"How could it be otherwise when just being together is happiness?" he answered.

"It's like peeking into Paradise," she said, wistfully.

"But you will--you'll promise me? You'll give up this?" There was a faint note of anxiety in his earnestness as he laid a hand upon her shoulder and looked at her steadily.

In the long space of time that she took to answer, the radiance died out of her face like a light that is extinguished slowly: "I'll tell you in the morning, Hughie. I must think. I make mistakes when I do what my heart impels me to. My impulses have been wrong always. I rely upon my head nowadays. I am weak to-night, and I've just judgment enough left to know it."

"But, Kate!" he expostulated in a kind of terror. "There isn't anything to argue about--to consider. This isn't business."

She shook her head.

"I must think, Hughie. I'll tell you in the morning. You'd better go down to camp now," she urged gently. "There isn't anything to be done up here, for every sheep will die that got enough poison."

"I can't bear to think of leaving you alone up here," he protested vehemently. "Why not let me stay and you go down to the wagons?"

She shook her head.

"There's not the slightest danger. He's done his work for the present, and it may be a long time before I'm again molested."

"Whom do you mean?" he asked quickly.