"No, I don't know that I _hate_ them, but there's a feeling--a sort of something one can't get over, something that grows in the air if you're raised among cattle. I despise sheep, detest them. They spoil our cattle range." Then after a short pause: "It's too bad he isn't a cattle-man!" "That's what I think," said Mary, "because the men are all gettin' down on him. He runs his sheep all over their range, an' they're makin' a big talk." "You shouldn't tell things, Mary, they're only talkin', anyway," reproved the older girl. "_Talkin'!_ Well, I should say so, an' you bet they mean business! But Miss Hathaway--Hope--don't care, an' I don't care neither, if he gets into a scrape; only he's got such a nice, pleasant face, an' he ain't on to the ways out here yet, neither--an' I don't care _what_ the men say! Tain't as if he meant anything through real meanness." "That's so," replied the older girl, "but maybe she don't want to hear such talk. It's bedtime, anyway; let's go in." "Yes, I'm tired," said Hope wearily, adding as she bade Mary good-night at her door: "I do hope he won't get into any trouble." CHAPTER IV The three months' school had begun in earnest. Each day Hope found new interest in her small class and in her surroundings. She readily learned to dispense with all the comforts and luxuries to which she had been born, substituting instead a rare sense of independence, an expansion of her naturally wild spirit. She dispensed also with conventionalities, except such as were ingrained with her nature, yet she was far from happy in the squaw-man's family. She could have ridden home in a few hours, but remembered too keenly her mother's anger and her father's parting words. He said to her: "You have hurt your mother and spoiled her summer by the stand you have taken. You are leaving here against my wishes and against your own judgment. The only thing I've got to say is this: don't come back here till you've finished your contract up there, till you've kept your word to the letter. No one of my blood is going back on their word. A few rough knocks will do you good." He probably discovered in a very few hours how much he loved his girl, how she had grown into his life, for the next day after she had left he drove to the distant town and hunted up his wife's nephew, who had caused all this trouble. "You deserve another thrashing," he said when he had found him, "but now you've got to turn to and do what you can to bring things back to where they were. Hope's left home and 's gone to teaching school up in the mountains at Harris'. Now, what in thunder am I going to do about it? She can't live there with those breeds. Lord, I slept there once and the fleas nearly ate me up!"