of authority and free from care; meeting each day with enthusiastic expectancy for what it held in store.  They were restless and improvident; the world counted them ne’er-do-wells, and yet she knew that at least their hours were full and that their names—­ some of them—­were written large in the distant places.  Alaire Austin often told herself that, had she been born a man, such a life as this might have been hers, and she took pleasure in dreaming sometimes of the experience that fate, in such a case, would have brought to her.

Being a woman, however, and being animated at this particular moment by a peculiarly feminine impulse, she felt urged to add her own touch to what nature had roughed out.  This man had been denied what she termed an education; therefore she decided to put one in his way.

“Do you like to read?” she asked him.

“Say!  It’s my favorite form of exercise.”  Law’s blue-gray eyes were expressionless, his face was bland.  “Why?”

“I have a great many books at Las Palmas.  You might enjoy some of them.”

“Now that’s nice of you, ma’am.  Mebbe I’ll look into this cattle-stealin’ in your neighborhood, and if I do I’ll sure come borrowin’.”

“Oh, I’ll send you a boxful when I get back,” said Alaire, and Dave thanked her humbly.

Later, when he went to move his mare into a shady spot, the Ranger chuckled and slapped his thigh with his hat.  “Bessie Belle, we’re going to improve our minds,” he said, aloud.  “We’re going to be literary and read Pilgrim’s Progress and Alice in Wonderland.  I bet we’ll enjoy ’em, eh?  But—­doggone!  She’s a nice lady, and your coat is just the same color as her hair.”

Where the shade was densest and the breeze played most freely, there Dave fixed a comfortable couch for his guest, and during the heat of the forenoon she dozed.

Asleep she exercised upon him an even more disturbing effect than when awake, for now he could study her beauty deliberately, from the loose pile of warm, red hair to the narrow, tight-laced boots.  What he saw was altogether delightful.  Her slightly parted lips offered an irresistible attraction—­almost an invitation; the heat had lent a feverish flush to her cheeks; Dave could count the slow pulsations of her white throat.  He closed his eyes and tried to quell his unruly longings.  He was a strong man; adventurous days and nights spent in the open had coarsened the masculine side of his character, perhaps at expense to his finer nature, for it is a human tendency to revert.  He was masterful and ruthless; lacking obligations or responsibilities of any sort, he had been accustomed to take what he wanted; therefore the gaze he fixed upon the sleeping woman betrayed an ardor calculated to deepen the color in her cheeks, had she beheld it.