“No broadhorn there,” said Pinky Smith, after he got well, and assumed the envied position of oracle on matters at the Halfway House.  “That ain’t no range stock, I want to tell you all.  What in h——­l she doin’ out yer I give it up, but you can mark it down she ain’t no common sort.”

“Oh, she like enough got some beau back in the States,” said another, grumblingly.

“Yes, er up to Ellis,” said Pinky, sagely.  “Thet lawyer feller up there, he come down to the ranch twict when I was there, and I ’low he’s shinin’ round some.”

“Well, I dunno,” said the other, argumentatively, as though to classify lawyers and cow-punchers in much the same category.

“But, pshaw!” continued Pinky.  “He don’t seem to hold no edge neither, fur’s I could see.  It was him that was a-doin’ all the guessin’.  She just a-standin’ pat all the time, same fer him as fer everybody else.  Reckon she ain’t got no beau, an’ don’t want none.”

“Beau be d——­d!” said his friend.  “Who said anything about beau?  First thing, feller’s got to be fitten.  Who’s fitten?”

“That’s right,” said Pinky.  “Yet I shore hope she’s located yer fer keeps.  Feller says, ‘They’s no place like home,’ and it’s several mile to another ranch like that’n’, er to another gal like her.”

“D——­n the lawyer!” said the other, after a time of silence, as they rode on together; and Pinky made understanding reply.

“That’s what!” said he.  “D——­n him, anyhow!”

As for Edward Franklin himself, he could not in his moments of wildest egotism assign himself to a place any better than that accorded each member of the clans who rallied about this Southern lady transplanted to the Western plains.  Repulsed in his first unskilled, impetuous advance; hurt, stung, cut to the quick as much at his own clumsiness and failure to make himself understood as at the actual rebuff received.  Franklin none the less in time recovered sufficient equanimity to seek to avail himself of such advantages as still remained; and he resolved grimly that he would persist until at least he had been accepted as something better than a blundering boor.  Under Major Buford’s invitation he called now and again at the Halfway Ranch, and the major was gladder each time to see him, for he valued the society of one whose experiences ran somewhat parallel with his own, and whose preferences were kindred to those of his natural class; and, moreover, there was always a strange comradery among those whose problems were the same, the “neighbours” of the sparsely settled West.  Mrs. Buford also received Franklin with pleasure, and Mary Ellen certainly always with politeness.  Yet, fatal sign, Mary Ellen never ran for her mirror when she knew that Franklin was coming.  He was but one of the many who came to the Halfway House; and Franklin, after more than one quiet repulse, began to know that this was an indifference grounded deeper than the strange haughtiness which came to be assumed by so many women of the almost womanless West, who found themselves in a land where the irreverent law of supply and demand assigned to them a sudden value.