“Why waste your time?” he mocked mordantly. “I’ll not impose on him a good-for-nothing loafer, a worthless rotten-to-the-core hobo, a slacker, a wastrel who ought to be on a rock-pile.” “Dad didn’t mean all that. He was angry. But if you don’t want to work for him, perhaps you’d work for me. I own a ranch, too.” He looked up the road into the dancing heat waves. She was wasting pity on him, was she? No doubt she would like to reform him. A dull resentment burned in him. His sulky eyes looked into hers. “No,” he said shortly. “But if you’re looking for work,” she persisted. “I’m particular about who I work for,” he told her brutally. She winced, but the soft dark eyes were still maternally tender for him. He had fought for her, had saved her from a situation that held at least degradation and perhaps horrible despair. Moreover, young though he was, she knew that life had mauled him fearfully. “I need men. I thought perhaps--” “You thought wrong.” “I’m sorry--about Father. You wouldn’t need to see him if you didn’t want to. The Quarter Circle D E is four miles from the Diamond Bar K.” “I don’t care if it’s forty,” he said bluntly. Her good intentions were at an _impasse_. The road was blocked. But she could not find it in her heart to give up yet, to let him turn himself adrift again upon a callous world. He needed help--needed it desperately, if she were any judge. It was written on his face that he was sailing stormy seas and that his life barque was drifting toward the rocks. What help she could give she must press upon him. “I’m asking you to be generous and forget what--what we did to you,” she pleaded, leaning down impulsively and putting a hand on his shoulder. “You saved me from that awful creature. Isn’t it your turn now to let me help you if I can?” “You can’t help me.” “But why not? You’re looking for work. I need men. Wouldn’t it be reasonable for us to get together on terms?” Her smile was very sweet and just a little wistful, her voice vivid as the sudden song of a meadow-lark. Under the warmth of her kindness his churlishness melted. “Good of you,” he said. “I’m much obliged. But it’s no use. Your father had the right of it. I’m not any good.” “I don’t believe it. Your life’s got twisted somehow. But you can straighten it. Let me help. Won’t you? Because of what you did for me just now.” Her hand moved toward him in a tentative offer of friendship. Automatically his eyes recorded that she wore a diamond ring on the third finger. Some lucky fellow, probably some clean young man who had given no hostages to vice, had won her sweet and gallant heart. She was all eager desire and sympathy. For a moment, as he looked into the dusky, mobile face that expressed a fine and gallant personality, it seemed possible for him to trample down the vice that was destroying him. But he pushed this aside as idle sentiment. His way was chosen for him and he could not go back.