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“It’s nine o’clock,” answered the girl, her eyes watching his every movement, her face alive.

“Then the moon’s up almost?”

“It’ll be up in an hour.”

“Jerickety! Then I’ve got to get ready.” He turned to the other room again and entered.

“College pup!” said Hawley, under his breath, savagely. “Why didn’t you tell me he was here?”

“Was it any of your business, Abe?” she rejoined, quietly.

“Hiding him away here–“

“Hiding? Who’s been hiding him? He’s doing what you’ve done. He’s smuggling–the last lot for the traders over by Dingan’s Drive. He’ll get it there by morning. He has as much right here as you. What’s got into you, Abe?”

“What does he know about the business? Why, he’s a college man from the East. I’ve heard o’ him. Ain’t got no more sense for this life than a dicky-bird. White-faced college pup! What’s he doing out here? If you’re a friend o’ his, you’d better look after him. He’s green.”

“He’s going East again,” she said, “and if I don’t go West with Bantry, or South over to Montana with Nick Pringle, or North–“

“Nance!” His eyes burned, his lips quivered.

She looked at him and wondered at the power she had over this bully of the border, who had his own way with most people, and was one of the most daring fighters, hunters, and smugglers in the country. He was cool, hard, and well in hand in his daily life, and yet, where she was concerned, “went all to pieces,” as some one else had said about himself to her.

She was not without the wiles and tact of her sex. “You go now, and come back, Abe,” she said, in a soft voice. “Come back in an hour. Come back then, and I’ll tell you which way I’m going from here.”

He was all right again. “It’s with you, Nance,” he said, eagerly. “I bin waiting four years.”

As he closed the door behind him the “college pup” entered the room again. “Oh, Abe’s gone!” he said, excitedly. “I hoped you’d get rid of the old rip-roarer. I wanted to be alone with you for a while. I don’t really need to start yet. With the full moon I can do it before daylight.” Then, with quick warmth, “Ah, Nancy, Nancy, you’re a flower–the flower of all the prairies,” he added, catching her hand and laughing into her eyes.

She flushed, and for a moment seemed almost bewildered. His boldness, joined to an air of insinuation and understanding, had influenced her greatly from the first moment they had met, two months ago, as he was going South on his smuggling enterprise. The easy way in which he had talked to her, the extraordinary sense he seemed to have of what was going on in her mind, the confidential meaning in voice and tone and words had, somehow, opened up a side of her nature hitherto unexplored. She had talked with him freely then, for it was only when he left her that he said what he instinctively knew she would remember till they met again. His quick comments, his indirect but acute questions, his exciting and alluring reminiscences of the East, his subtle yet seemingly frank compliments, had only stimulated a new capacity in her, evoked comparisons of this delicate-looking, fine-faced gentleman with the men of the West by whom she was surrounded. But later he appeared to stumble into expressions of admiration for her, as though he was carried off his feet and had been stunned by her charm. He had done it all like a master. He had not said that she was beautiful–she knew she was not–but that she was wonderful and fascinating, and with “something about her” he had never seen in all his life: like her own prairies, thrilling, inspiring, and adorable. His first look at her had seemed full of amazement. She had noticed that, and thought it meant only that he was surprised to find a white girl out here among smugglers, hunters, squaw-men, and Indians. But he said that the first look at her had made him feel things, feel life and women different from ever before; and he had never seen any one like her, nor a face with so much in it. It was all very brilliantly done.