"Oh, scat!" cried Judith at him, half laughing, still half crying. She had wiped her eyes but still two big tears, untouched, trembled on her cheeks. In spite of him Lee couldn't keep his eyes off of them. "I'm just crying," Judith told him then, with a sudden assumption of cool dignity which had in it something of defiance. "I've got a right to, if I want to, haven't I? What do you look at me like that for?" "Sure," he answered hastily. "It does you good to cry; I know. Great thing. All ladies do, sometimes----" Judith sniffed. "You know all that there is to be known about '_ladies_,' don't you? In your vast wisdom all you've got to do is lump 'em in one of your brilliant generalities. That's the man of you!" "Maybe I'd better go make the coffee?" he suggested hurriedly. "It's after twelve. And it'll do you good. A nice hot cup." "Maybe you had," said Judith icily. "Perhaps I can postpone my conversation with you until the water boils." Lee went into the cabin without looking back. Judith, watching him, saw that he ran his hand across his forehead. She sniffed at him again. But when Lee had the coffee ready she had washed her face at the spring, had tucked her tumbled hair back under her hat, and, looking remarkably cool, came into the cabin. Lee thought of his meeting with Marcia, of her repeated assurance that she knew she had violated the conventions. "You _can_ make coffee," Judith nodded her approval as she sipped at the black beverage, cooled a little by condensed milk. Lee was busied with a tin containing potted meat. "Now, have you got over your shock so that I can talk with you?" He smiled at her across the little oil-cloth-covered table, and answered lightly and with his old assurance that he guessed he had steadied his nerve. Hadn't he told her a cup of coffee would do wonders? "Would it go to your head," began the girl abruptly, "if I were to tell you that I size you up as the best man I've got on my pay-roll?" "I'd try to keep both feet on the ground," he said gravely, though he wondered what was coming. "I'll explain," she continued, her tone impersonally businesslike. "Next to you, I count on Doc Tripp; next to Tripp, on Carson. They are good men; they are trustworthy; they understand ranch conditions and they know what loyalty to the home-range means. But Tripp is just a veterinarian; simply that and nothing more. His horizon isn't very wide. Neither is Carson's." "And mine?" he grinned at her. "Read me my horoscope, Miss Sanford!" "You have taken the trouble to be something more than just a horse foreman," she told him quietly. "I don't know what your advantages have been; if you haven't gone through high school, then at least you have been ambitious enough to get books, to read, to educate yourself. You have developed further than Carson; you have broadened more than Tripp." "Thanks," he offered dryly.