“Then it seems that it is just you and I, Kid, who have got to settle this little affair,” he announced, firmly.  “I ’ll have my say about it, and then you can uncork your feelings.  I rather imagine I have n’t very much legal right in the premises, but I ’ve got a sort of moral grip on you by reason of having pulled you out alive from that canyon yonder, and I propose to play this game to the limit.  You say your mother is dead, and the man who raised you is dead, and, so far as either of us know, there is n’t a soul anywhere on earth who possesses any claim over you, or any desire to have.  Then, naturally, the whole jack-pot is up to me, provided I ’ve got the cards.  Now, Kid, waving your prejudice aside, I ain’t just exactly the best man in this world to bring up a girl like you and make a lady out of her.  I thought yesterday that maybe we might manage to hitch along together for a while, but I ’ve got a different think coming to-day.  There ’s no use disfiguring the truth.  I ’m a gambler, something of a fighter on the side, and folks don’t say anything too pleasant about my peaceful disposition around these settlements; I have n’t any home, and mighty few friends, and the few I have got are nothing to boast about.  I reckon there ’s a cause for it all.  So, considering everything, I ’m about the poorest proposition ever was heard of to start a young ladies’ seminary.  The Lord knows old Gillis was bad enough, but I ’m a damned sight worse.  Now, some woman has got to take you in hand, and I reckon I ’ve found the right one.”

“Goin’ to get married, Bob?”

“Not this year; it’s hardly become so serious as that, but I ’m going to find you a good home here, and I ’m going to put up plenty of stuff, so that they ’ll take care of you all right and proper.”

The dark eyes never wavered as they looked steadily into the gray ones, but the chin quivered slightly.

“I reckon I ’d rather try it alone,” she announced stubbornly.  “Maybe I might have stood it with you, Bob Hampton, but a woman is the limit.”

Hampton in other and happier days had made something of a study of the feminine nature, and he realized now the utter impracticability of any attempt at driving.

“I expect it will go rather hard at first, Kid,” he admitted craftily, “but I think you might try it a while just to sort of please me.”

“Who—­who is she?” doubtfully.

“Mrs. Herndon, wife of the superintendent of the ‘Golden Rule’ mine”; and he waved his hand toward the distant houses.  “They tell me she’s a mighty fine woman.”

“Oh, they do?  Then somebody’s been stirring you up about me, have they?  I thought that was about the way of it.  Somebody wants to reform me, I reckon.  Well, maybe I won’t be reformed.  Who was it, Bob?”

“The Presbyterian Missionary,” he confessed reluctantly, “a nervy little chap named Wynkoop; he came in to see me last night while you were asleep.”  He faced her open scorn unshrinkingly, his mind fully decided, and clinging to one thought with all the tenacity of his nature.