“I don’t believe you’re a bank robber, at all!  I don’t believe you are even a rustler!  You’re a false alarm!”

Both Keller and Miss Sanderson smiled at the daring of the girl’s challenge.  But the former defended himself with apparent heat.

“What makes you think so?  Why should you undermine my reputation with such an assertion?  You can’t talk that way about me without proving it, Miss Purdy.”

“Well, I don’t.  You don’t look it.”

“I can’t help that.  You ask Mr. Healy.  He’ll tell you I am.”

“You’ll need a better witness than Brill before I’ll believe it.”

“And I thought you were going to like me,” he lamented.

“I like a lot of people who aren’t ruffians, but of course I can’t admire you so much as if you were a really truly bad man.”

“But if I promise to be one?”

“Oh, anybody can promise,” she flung back, eyes bubbling with laughter.

“Wait till I get on my feet again.”

A youth galloped up to the house in a cloud of alkali dust.

“There’s Cuffs,” announced Phyllis, smiling at Bess.

That young woman blushed a little, supposed, aloud, she must go out to see him, and withdrew in seeming reluctance.

“He wants Bess to go with him to the Frying Pan dance.  He sent a note over from the round-up to ask her.  She hasn’t had a chance yet to tell him that she would,” explained her friend.

“How will he take her?” asked the nester, his eyes quickening.

“In the surrey, I suppose.  Why?”

“The surrey will hold four.”

She made no pretense of not understanding.  Her look met his in a betrayal of the pleasure his invitation gave her.  Yet she shook her head.

“No, thank you.”

“But why—­if I may ask?”

“Ah!  But you mayn’t,” she smiled.

He considered that.  “You like to dance.”

“Most girls do.”

“Then it is because of me,” he soliloquized aloud.

“Please,” she begged lightly.

“My reputation, I suppose.”

She began to roll up the embroidery upon which she was busy.  But he got to the door before her.

“No, you don’t.”

“You are not going to make me tell you why I can’t go with you, are you?”

“That, to start with.  Then I’m going to make you tell me some other things.”

“But if I don’t want to tell?” Her eyes were wide open with surprise, for he had never before taken the masterful line with her.  Deep down, she liked it; but she had no intention of letting him know so.

“There are times not to tell, and there are times to tell.  This will be one of the last kind, Phyllis.”

She tried mockery.  “When you throw a big chest like that I suppose you always get what you want.”

“You act right funny, girl.  I never see you alone any more.  We haven’t had a good talk for more than a week.  Now, why?”