The trace of a sardonic smile was in his eyes. For the moment as she looked at him she thought he might. But she answered: "I don't quite see how." "You hate me, I suppose," he blurted out bluntly. "I suppose so." And more briskly she added, with dimples playing near the corners of her mouth: "Of course I do." "That's frank. It's worth something to have so decent an enemy. I don't believe you would shoot me in the back." "Some of the others would. You should be more careful," she cried before she could stop herself. He shrugged. "I take my fighting chance." "It isn't much of a one. You'll be shot at from ambush some day." "It wouldn't be a new experience. I went through it last week." "Where?" she breathed. "Down by Willow Wash." "Who did it?" He laughed, without amusement. "I didn't have my rifle with me, so I didn't stay to inquire." "It must have been some of those wild vaqueros." "That was my guess." "But you have other enemies, too." "Miss Lee," he smiled. "I mean others that are dangerous." "Your father?" he asked. "Father would never do that except in a fair fight. I wasn't thinking of him." "I don't know whom you mean, but a few extras don't make much difference when one is so liberally supplied already," he said cynically. "I shouldn't make light of them if I were you," she cautioned. "Who do you mean?" "I've said all I'm going to, and more than I ought," she told him decisively. "Except this, that it's your own fault. You shouldn't be so stiff. Why don't you compromise? With the cattlemen, for instance. They have a good deal of right on their side. They _did_ have the range first." "You should tell that to your father, too." "Dad runs sheep on the range to protect himself. He doesn't drive out other people's cattle and take away their living." "Well, I might compromise, but not at the end of a gun." "No, of course not. Here comes dad now," she added hurriedly, aware for the first time that she had been holding an extended conversation with her father's foe. "We started enemies and we quit enemies. Will you shake hands on that, Miss Lee?" he asked. She held out her hand, then drew it swiftly back. "No, I can't. I forgot. There's another reason." "Another reason! You mean the Arkansas charge against me?" he asked quietly. "No. I can't tell you what it is." She felt herself suffused in a crimson glow. How could she explain that she could not touch hands with him because she had robbed him of twenty thousand dollars?