“You mustn’t talk to me, Dick,” responded his friend gravely.  “Little Willie told a lie, and he’s being stood in a corner.”

Arlie flushed angrily, opened her mouth to speak, and, changing her mind, looked at him witheringly.  He didn’t wither, however.  Instead, he smiled broadly, got out his mouth organ, and cheerfully entertained them with his favorite, “I Met My Love In the Alamo.”

The hot blood under dusky skin held its own in her cheeks.  She was furious with him, and dared not trust herself to speak.  As soon as they had passed through the defile she spurred forward, as if to turn the leaders.  France turned to his friend and laughed ruefully.

“She’s full of pepper, Steve.”

The ranger nodded.  “She’s all right, Dick.  If you want to know, she’s got a right to make a doormat of me.  I lied to her.  I was up against it, and I kinder had to.  You ride along and join her.  If you want to get right solid, tell her how many kinds of a skunk I am.  Worst of it is, I ain’t any too sure I’m not.”

“I’m sure for you then, Steve,” the lad called back, as he loped forward after the girl.

He was so sure, that he began to praise his friend to Arlie, to tell her of what a competent cowman he was, how none of them could make a cut or rope a wild steer like him.  She presently wanted to know whether Dick could not find something more interesting to talk about.

He could not help smiling at her downright manner.  “You’ve surely got it in for him, Arlie.  I thought you liked him.”

She pulled up her horse, and looked at him.  “What made you think that?  Did he tell you so?”

Dick fairly shouted.  “You do rub it in, girl, when you’ve got a down on a fellow.  No, he didn’t tell me.  You did.”

“Me?” she protested indignantly.  “I never did.”

“Oh, you didn’t say so, but I don’t need a church to fall on me before I can take a hint.  You acted as though you liked him that day you and him came riding into camp.”

“I didn’t do any such thing, Dick France.  I don’t like him at all,” very decidedly.

“All the boys do—­ all but Jed.  I don’t reckon he does.”

“Do I have to like him because the boys do?” she demanded.

“O’ course not.”  Dick stopped, trying to puzzle it out.  “He says you ain’t to blame, that he lied to you.  That seems right strange, too.  It ain’t like Steve to lie.”

“How do you know so much about him?  You haven’t known him a week.”

“That’s what Jed says.  I say it ain’t a question of time.  Some men I’ve knew ten years I ain’t half so sure of.  He’s a man from the ground up.  Any one could tell that, before they had seen him five minutes "

Secretly, the girl was greatly pleased.  She so wanted to believe that Dick was right.  It was what she herself had thought.

“I wish you’d seen him the day he pulled Siegfried out of Lost Creek.  Tell you, I thought they were both goners,” Dick continued.