"Most folks don't want what's best for them, I allow. But if they have luck it sometimes comes to them." "Luck!" she echoed, her chin in the air. "You heard me right. What you need is a man that ain't afraid of you, one to ride close herd on you so as to head off them stampede notions of yours. Now this lad is the very one. He is a black-haired guy, and when he says a thing----" Involuntarily she glanced at his sleek black head. Melissy felt a sudden clamor of the blood, a pounding of the pulses. "--he most generally means it. I've wrangled around a heap with him and there's no manner of doubt he's up to specifications. In appearance he looks like me. Point of fact, he's a dead ringer for me." She saw her chance and flashed out. "Now you're flattering him. There can't be two as--as fascinating as Senor Norris," she mocked. His smoldering eyes had the possessive insolence she resented and yet found so stimulating. "Did I say there were two?" he drawled. It was his parting shot. With a touch of the spur he was off, leaving her no time for an adequate answer. There were no elusions and inferences about Philip Norris when he wanted to be direct. He had fairly taken her breath away. Melissy's instinct told her there was something humiliating about such a wooing. But picturesque and unconventional conduct excuse themselves in a picturesque personality. And this man had that if nothing else. She told herself she was angry at him, that he took liberties far beyond those of any of the other young men. Yet, somehow, she went into the house smiling. A color born of excitement burned beneath her sparkling eyes. She had entered into her heritage of womanhood and the call of sex was summoning her to the adventure that is old as the garden where Eve met Adam. CHAPTER V THE TENDERFOOT TAKES UP A CLAIM Mr. Diller, alias Morse, alias Bellamy, did not long remain at the Bar Double G as a rider. It developed that he had money, and, tenderfoot though he was, the man showed a shrewd judgment in his investments. He bought sheep and put them on the government forest reserve, much to the annoyance of the cattlemen of the district. Morse, as he now called himself, was not the first man who had brought sheep into the border country. Far up in the hills were several camps of them. But hitherto these had been there on sufferance, and it had been understood that they were to be kept far from the cattle range. The extension of the government reserves changed the equation. A good slice of the range was cut off and thrown open to sheep. When Morse leased this and put five thousand bleaters upon the feeding ground the sentiment against him grew very bitter.