Upon only two days had it been given him to speak with her.  He thought of that, but he knew that made no iota of difference.  For he knew her better than he knew any woman with whom he had danced or driven or attended theaters and dinners.  In that first glimpse from the Pullman window he had seen the purposeful character of her.  To-day he had seen it again.  To-day he knew that he knew Argyl Crawford, that she had been herself to him, unaffected, honest, womanly.  Her nature was simple, straightforward, open, unassuming.  Its beauty struck one as the beauty of a Grecian temple, its lines pure and noble, the whole edifice the more wonderful in that it depended upon itself alone and needed no adornment.

She had shaken hands with him last night when he left her at the house, not perfunctorily, but firmly, as the strong-handed cowboys shook hands, and had said to him, simply: 

“I wish you luck, Greek Conniston, in the fight you are about to make.”

He remembered the hand-clasp.  She seemed unable to do anything, no matter how small, without putting her whole self into it, her frankness, her sincerity, her eagerness.  And Conniston of to-night, scowling at the match which he had swept across his thigh to light his pipe and now let die down to his fingers, muttered, not without cause, that he had his nerve with him even to think about her.

The other thing which was clear to him was that he must “lick” Brayley.  If he did nothing else in all of his futile life, if he quit work or were fired the next minute, he must “lick” Brayley.  It did not strike him as amusing, as even strange, that these two things and these alone should be the only things of which he was sure.  He merely accepted them as inevitable.  He felt no particular resentment toward Brayley.  The man had treated him fairly enough since that first night in the bunk-house.  He looked upon the matter calmly, almost impersonally, as a duty to which he must attend.  And he was not going to wait for an excuse.  An opportunity would do.

It was half-past ten, and very late for cow-puncher land, when Greek strode away through the darkness to the bunk-house.

When morning came it happened that Brayley rose fifteen minutes early, Conniston fifteen minutes late.  The foreman left immediately for a far corner of the range, and Conniston, having made a quick breakfast, went about his own work.  In the corral he selected a horse which heretofore he had carefully left alone, knowing the brute’s half-tamed spirit and not caring to trust to it.  But now it was different.  He waited his opportunity before throwing his rope.  Then, as the horse, seeming to know that he had been singled out, shot by him, he cast his lasso.  And there was a grim light, but at the same time a light of deep satisfaction in Conniston’s eyes as he saw that his whirling noose had gone unerringly, settling as Toothy’s rope would have done.