She put up her hand: "Wait till you see how you like _my_ good time." He was quick to come back. "I'll agree right now to like anything you offer--and I don't care a hang what it is, either." Looking straight at him she asked a question. Its emphasis lay in her quiet tone: "Will you stand to that?" He looked at her until she felt his eyes were going right through her: "I've got enemies," he said slowly, and there was now more than a touch of hardness in his voice; "most men have. But the worst of 'em never claimed my word isn't good." "Then," exclaimed Kate, hastening to escape the serious tone, "you tend counter while I go and see about the horses." "No," he objected, "that's a man's job. You tell me where to go and _I'll_ get the horses." Kate was most firm: "If you're going to ride with _me_," she said, "you must do my way. Take a woman's job for a few minutes and see how you like it." He regarded her with the simplicity of a child, but replied like a case-hardened cowboy: "I don't like a woman's job, of course. But I'm ready to do any blamed thing you say." "Do you suppose," Kate demanded with an air, "they would turn two horses over to _you_ up at Doubleday's?" She had put her foot in it: "I tell you," he protested, "I don't want to ride a horse of Doubleday's. I'm up here to talk to Barb Doubleday. And nobody can say just how it's coming out. At the ranch they swore he was at Sleepy Cat. I rode down there and they told me he was at the Junction, so I took the train over here. Now you tell me he's at the mines--that's where I'll say what I've got to say. But I don't want to take any advantage. And I don't want to impose on his property rights so much as a single hair. That's exactly what's between us." Kate, established in treacherous ambush, felt qualms at his stern, clear code. She tried to shut him off, but he was wrought up: "Barb swore to me once he had nothing to do with it," he persisted obstinately. "All I can say is, if a man fools me once it's his fault; if he fools me twice, it's mine." "What about a woman?" asked Kate, trying hard to say one thing and think another. He opened his eyes: "I never thought much about that. A man can't fight a woman," he returned reflectively. "And I've yet to see one I could fool." "What should you do," she asked, turning her back while she straightened her hat in the buffet mirror, "if you ever met one that fooled you?" "No woman would ever take the trouble." She laughed a little: "You never can tell." "If a woman ever fooled me, she'd have to fool herself first--so she'd be the loser." "What a philosopher!" "First and last, I've been called a good many names--some full hard--but never a philosopher before." Kate started for the front door: "Hold on a minute," he objected, "what's to do here while you're gone?" "Serve coffee and sandwiches if anybody comes in. This time of day there's never anybody comes in."