Kent glanced at her, approved mentally of the color in her cheeks and the angry light in her eyes, and laughed at her quite openly. “There's nothing like getting good and mad once in a while, to take the kinks out of your brain,” he observed. “And there's nothing like lonesomeness to put 'em in. A good fighting mad is what you need, now and then; I'll have to put Man next, I guess. He's too mild.” “No one could accuse you of that,” she retorted, laughing a little in spite of herself. “If I were a man I should want to blacken your eyes--” And she blushed hotly at being betrayed into a personality which seemed to her undignified, and, what was worse, unrefined. She turned her back squarely toward him, started down the path, and remembered that she had not filled the water bucket, and that without it she could not consistently return to the house. Kent interpreted her glance, went sliding down the steep bank and recovered the pail; he was laughing to himself while he rinsed and filled it at the spring, but he made no effort to explain his amusement. When he came back to where she stood watching him, Val gave her head a slight downward tilt to indicate her thanks, turned, and led the way back to the house without a word. And he, following after, watched her slim figure swinging lightly down the hill before him, and wondered vaguely what sort of a hell her life was going to be, out here where everything was different from what she had been accustomed to, and where she did not seem to “fit into the scenery,” as he put it. “You ought to learn to ride horseback,” he advised unexpectedly. “Pardon me--you ought to learn to wait until your advice is wanted,” she replied calmly, without turning her head. And she added, with a sort of defiance: “I do not feel the need of either society or diversion, I assure you; I am perfectly contented.” “That's real nice,” he approved. “There's nothing like being satisfied with what's handed out to you.” But, though he spoke with much unconcern, his tone betrayed his skepticism. The others had finished eating and were sitting upon their heels in the shade of the house, smoking and talking in that desultory fashion common to men just after a good meal. Two or three glanced rather curiously at Kent and his companion, and he detected the covert smile on the scandal-hungry face of Polycarp Jenks, and also the amused twist of Fred De Garmo's lips. He went past them without a sign of understanding, set the water pail down in its proper place upon a bench inside the kitchen door, tilted his hat to Val, who happened to be looking toward him at that moment, and went out again. “What's the hurry, Kenneth?” quizzed Polycarp, when Kent started toward the corral.