“I’m an ungrateful little idiot.  Any other girl in town would jump at the chance to say, ‘Thank you, kind sir.’”

“But you can’t,” he said gently.

“No, I can’t.”

He was not sure whether there was a flash of tears in her brown eyes, but he knew by that little trick of biting the lower lip that they were not far away.  She was a tender-hearted little comrade, and it always hurt her to hurt others.

Billie drew a long breath.  “That’s settled, too, then.  I asked you once before if there was some one else.  I ask you again, but don’t tell me if you’d rather not.”

“Yes.”

“You mean there is.”

Again the scarlet splashed into her cheeks.  She nodded her head three or four times quickly in assent.

“Not Jim Clanton?” he said, alarmed.

A faint, tender smile flashed on her lips.  “I don’t think I’ll tell you who he is, Billie.”

He hesitated.  “That’s all right, Polly.  I don’t want to pry into yore secret.  But—­don’t do anything foolish.  Don’t marry a man with the notion of reformin’ him or because he seems to you romantic.  You have lots of sense.  You’ll use it, won’t you?” he pleaded.

“I’ll try to use it, Billie,” she promised.  Then, the soft eyes shining and the color still high in her cheeks, she added impulsively:  “I don’t know anybody that needs some one to love him more than that poor boy does.”

“Mebbeso.  But don’t you be that some one, Polly.”  He hesitated, divided between loyalty to his friend and his desire for this girl’s good.  His brown, unscarred hand caught hers in a firm grip.  “Don’t you do it, little girl.  Don’t you.  The woman that marries Jim Clanton is doomed to be miserable.  There’s no escape for her.  She’s got to live with her heart in her throat till the day they bring his dead body back to her.”

She leaned toward him, and now there was no longer any doubt that her eyes were bright with unshed tears.  “Perhaps a woman doesn’t marry for happiness alone, Billie.  That may come to her, or it may not.  But she has to fulfill her destiny.  I don’t know how to say what I mean, but she must go on and live her life and forget herself.”

Prince rejected this creed flatly.  “No!  No!  The best way to fulfill yore life is to be happy.  That’s what you’ve always done, an’ that’s why you’ve made other people happy.  Because you go around singin’ an’ dancin’, we all want to tune up with you.  When I was out bossin’ a freight outfit I used to think of you at night under the stars as a little Joybird.  Now you’ve got it in that curly head of yours that you ’d ought to be some kind of a missionary martyr for the sake of a man’s soul.  That’s all wrong.”

“Is it?” she asked him with a crooked, little, wistful smile.  “How about you?  Do you want to be sheriff?  Is it going to make you so awfully happy to spend your time running down outlaws for the good of the country?  Aren’t you doing it because you’ve been called to it and not because you like it?”