Gail Thorpe rose from the piano in the big ranch house of the S Bar S, rearranged the mountain flowers that filled a vase on a tabouret, then knocked slowly, firmly, commandingly, on a door that led from the living room. "Well, I don't want you; but I s'pose you might as well come in and get it off your mind!" The voice from the other side spoke in feigned annoyance. It continued to grumble until a lithe figure, topped by a mass of hair like pulled sunshine, flung itself at him, twining warm arms about his neck and kissing the words from the lips of big Bob Thorpe as he sat before his desk in the room that served as the ranch office. "Will you ever say it again--that you don't want me?" she demanded. "No--but merely because I'm intimidated into promising," he answered. His big arms went tight about the slender body and he pulled his daughter up on his lap. A silence, while she fussed with his necktie. Her blue eyes looked into his gray ones a moment as though absently, then back to the necktie. Her fingers fell idle; her head snuggled against his neck. Bob Thorpe laughed loud and long. "Well, what is it this morning?" he asked between chuckles. The girl sat up suddenly, pushed back the hair that defied fastenings, and tapped a stretched palm with the stiff forefinger of the other hand. "I'm not a Western girl," she declared deliberately; and then, as the brown face before her clouded, hastened: "Oh, I'm not wanting to go away! I mean, I'm not truly a Western girl, but I want to be. I want to fit better. "When we decided that I should graduate and come back here with my mommy and daddy for the rest of my life, I decided. There was nothing halfway about it. Some of the other girls thought it awful; but I don't see the attraction in their way of living. "When I was a little girl I was a sort of tom-cow-boy. I could do things as well as any of the boys I ever knew could do them. But after ten years, mostly away in the East, where girls are like plants, I've lost it all. Now I want to get it back." "Well, go to it!" "Wait! I want to start well--high up. I want to have the best that there is to have. I--want--a--horse!" "Horse? Bless me, _bambino_, there are fifty broken horses running in the back pasture now, besides what the boys have on the ride. Take your pick!" "Oh, I know!" she said with gentle scoffing. "That sort of a horse--just cow-ponies. I love 'em, but I guess--well--" "You've been educated away from 'em, you mean?" he chuckled. "Well, whatever it is--I want something better. I, as a daughter of the biggest, best man in Colorado, want to ride the best animal that ever felt a cinch." "Well?" "And I want to have him now, so I can get used to him this fall and look forward to coming back to him in the spring." Bob Thorpe took both her hands in one of his. "And if a thing like that will make my bambino happy, I guess she'll have it." The girl kissed him and held her cheek close against his for a breath.