"How--how can a girl..." began Jean. "See here, miss, I'm beggin' your pardon for--sort of stirrin' you to forget yourself a little. Reckon I understand. You don't meet many strangers an' I sort of hit you wrong--makin' you feel too much--an' talk too much. Who an' what you are is none of my business. But we met.... An' I reckon somethin' has happened--perhaps more to me than to you.... Now let me put you straight about clothes an' women. Reckon I know most women love nice things to wear an' think because clothes make them look pretty that they're nicer or better. But they're wrong. You're wrong. Maybe it 'd be too much for a girl like you to be happy without clothes. But you can be--you axe just as nice, an'--an' fine--an', for all you know, a good deal more appealin' to some men."
"Stranger, y'u shore must excuse my temper an' the show I made of myself," replied the girl, with composure. "That, to say the least, was not nice. An' I don't want anyone thinkin' better of me than I deserve. My mother died in Texas, an' I've lived out heah in this wild country--a girl alone among rough men. Meetin' y'u to-day makes me see what a hard lot they are--an' what it's done to me."
Jean smothered his curiosity and tried to put out of his mind a growing sense that he pitied her, liked her.
"Are you a sheep herder?" he asked.
"Shore I am now an' then. My father lives back heah in a canyon. He's a sheepman. Lately there's been herders shot at. Just now we're short an' I have to fill in. But I like shepherdin' an' I love the woods, and the Rim Rock an' all the Tonto. If they were all, I'd shore be happy."
"Herders shot at!" exclaimed Jean, thoughtfully. "By whom? An' what for?"
"Trouble brewin' between the cattlemen down in the Basin an' the sheepmen up on the Rim. Dad says there'll shore be hell to pay. I tell him I hope the cattlemen chase him back to Texas."
"Then-- Are you on the ranchers' side?" queried Jean, trying to pretend casual interest.
"No. I'll always be on my father's side," she replied, with spirit. "But I'm bound to admit I think the cattlemen have the fair side of the argument."
"How so?"
"Because there's grass everywhere. I see no sense in a sheepman goin' out of his way to surround a cattleman an' sheep off his range. That started the row. Lord knows how it'll end. For most all of them heah are from Texas."