“My dear, I’ve told you several times, though you’ve seemed not to listen to me, that I’m no horseman. I rather think you’d better let me off, to-morrow; it’s highly probable that I’d cut a sorry figure in the saddle.” Ginger drew back in his arms, wide-eyed. “But you’ll _have_ to ride, Dean! You couldn’t possibly drive the car--we go by trail and straight over the hills--and you couldn’t walk.” “Why not?” “Because it’ll be a forty-mile trip, and--why, it wouldn’t be safe, goose! You _are_ a tenderfoot, aren’t you? The steers are all right when you’re on horseback, but they’d rush over you in a wink, afoot.” “Forty miles,” said Dean, thoughtfully. “It sounds rather a large order, Ginger, dear. Suppose I don’t go?” “Suppose you don’t--_go_?” She stared at him and her voice was cold with astonishment. “Why--what’ll everybody think?” “I don’t understand you.” “What’ll everybody think about _you_, if you don’t go--when it’s my ranch and my cattle, and everybody coming back here for the big feed at night and the dance?” she wanted hotly to know. Dean Wolcott colored slowly. “I fail to see where it is any one’s affair but my own--and yours, of course. If we decide that it is wiser----” “But we haven’t and we aren’t going to!” she flamed out at him. “Oh, can’t you see how it is? Everybody, Estrada and his men and all the neighbors and people I’ve known ever since I was born, think it’s funny and queer, my being--engaged to you. They think easterners are just like _foreigners_. I did, too,” she was gentle for an instant, “before you came! And if you ditch the ride, and just sit around the house and wait for the big feed and the dance, they’ll say--anyhow, ’Rome Ojeda’ll say--that you’re bluffed out. ’Rome Ojeda’s been trying to make me say I’d marry him ever since I was fifteen; _he_’ll say you’re--afraid.” He did not speak at once, and Ginger, watching him, breathing fast after her long speech, saw that he was looking a lot like the other Mr. Wolcott. “And what will you say, Ginger, if I tell you that I won’t ride? What will you say?” He was very quiet about it. “It doesn’t matter in the least to me what a lot of ranchers and cowboys think or say--Ojeda or any one else. But--what will you say?” Even a resemblance to the cousin who had convoyed him disapprovingly across the continent made her truculent, and his voice was even more like the other than his expression. “I’ll say you _must_--” she caught herself midway, aghast to find how nearly she had said the unforgivable thing. She came close to him again and put her arms around his neck and clasped her hands behind his head, and pulled his grave face down to her. “I won’t have to say anything, because I know you’re going to do it for me--aren’t you, Dean--_dearest_?”