The Captain snorted loudly and tore away in a proud circle of the corral, as though to flaunt his graces. "Oh, daddy, it took a _man_ to break that animal!" the girl breathed. The bronze of VB's face darkened, then paled. He turned a steady look on the sunny-haired woman, and the full thanks that swelled in his throat almost found words. He wanted to cry out to her, to tell her what such things meant; for she was of his sort, highly bred, capable of understanding. And he found himself thinking: "You are! You are! You're as I thought you must be!" Then he felt Thorpe's gaze and turned to meet it, a trifle guiltily. "Yours?" the man asked. "Mine." Thorpe turned back to the Captain. Gail drew a quick breath and turned away from him--to the man. "I thought so when he commenced to quiet," muttered Thorpe. He looked then at his daughter and found her standing still, hands clasped, lips the least trifle parted, gazing at Young VB. Something in him urged a quick step forward. It was an alarm, something primal in the fathers of women. But Bob Thorpe put the notion aside as foolishness--or tenderness--and walked closer to the corral, chewing his cigar speculatively. The stallion wrinkled his nose and dropped the ears flat, the orange glimmer coming into his eyes. "Don't like strangers, I see." "Not crazy about them," VB answered. Thorpe walked off to the left, then came back. He removed his cigar and looked at Gail. She fussed with her rebellious hair and her face was flushed; she no longer looked at the horse--or at VB. He felt a curiosity about that flush. "Well, want to get rid of him?" Thorpe hooked his thumbs in his vest armholes and confronted VB. No answer. "What do you want for him?" The young fellow started. "What?" he said in surprise. "I was thinking. I didn't catch your question." The fact was, he had heard, but had distrusted the sense. The idea of men offering money for the Captain had never occurred to him. "What do you want for him?" VB smiled. "What do I want for him?" he repeated. "I want--feed and water for the rest of his life; shelter when he needs it; the will to treat him as he should be treated. And I guess that's about all." The other again removed his cigar, and his jaw dropped. A cow-puncher talking so! He could not believe it; and the idea so confused him that he blundered right on with the bargaining. "Five hundred? Seven-fifty? No? Well, how much?" VB smiled again, just an indulgent smile prompted by the knowledge that he possessed a thing beyond the power of even this man's wealth. "The Captain is not for sale," he said. "Not to-day--or ever. That's final." There was more talk, but all the kindly bluffness, all the desire instinctive in Bob Thorpe to give the other man an even break in the bargain, fell flat. This stranger, this thirty-five-dollar-a-month ranch hand, shed his offers as a tin roof sheds rain and with a self-possession characterized by unmistakable assurance.