"Let go my shoulders," she said quietly. "I'm not your property. Go and get some Piegan girl to bully. Keep your hands off. I'm not a bronco for you to bit and bridle. You've got no rights. You--" Suddenly she relented, seeing the look in his face, and realising that, after all, it was a tribute to herself that she could keep him for four years and rouse him to such fury--"but yes, Abe," she added, "you have some rights. We've been good friends all these years, and you've been all right out here. You said some nice things about me just now, and I liked it, even if it was as if you learned it out of a book. I've got no po'try in me; I'm plain homespun. I'm a sapling, I'm not any prairie-flower, but I like when I like, and I like a lot when I like. I'm a bit of hickory, I'm not a prairie-flower--" "Who said you was a prairie-flower? Did I? Who's talking about prairie- flowers--" He stopped suddenly, turned round at the sound of a footstep behind him, and saw, standing in a doorway leading to another room, a man who was digging his knuckles into his eyes and stifling a yawn. He was a refined-looking stripling of not more than twenty-four, not tall, but well made, and with an air of breeding, intensified rather than hidden by his rough clothes. "Je-rick-ety! How long have I slept?" he said, blinking at the two beside the fire. "How long?" he added, with a flutter of anxiety in his tone. "I said I'd wake you," said the girl, coming forwards. "You needn't have worried." "I don't worry," answered the young man. "I dreamed myself awake, I suppose. I got dreaming of redcoats and U. S. marshals, and an ambush in the Barfleur Coulee, and--" He saw a secret, warning gesture from the girl, and laughed, then turned to Abe and looked him in the face. "Oh, I know him! Abe Hawley's all O. K.--I've seen him over at Dingan's Drive. Honour among rogues. We're all in it. How goes it--all right?" he added carelessly to Hawley, and took a step forwards, as though to shake hands. Seeing the forbidding look by which he was met, however, he turned to the girl again, as Hawley muttered something they could not hear. "What time is it?" he asked. "It's nine o'clock," answered the girl, her eyes watching his every movement, her face alive. "Then the moon's up almost?" "It'll be up in an hour." "Jerickety! Then I've got to get ready." He turned to the other room again and entered. "College pup!" said Hawley under his breath savagely. "Why didn't you tell me he was here?" "Was it any of your business, Abe?" she rejoined quietly. "Hiding him away here--" "Hiding? Who's been hiding him? He's doing what you've done. He's smuggling--the last lot for the traders over by Dingan's Drive. He'll get it there by morning. He has as much right here as you. What's got into you, Abe?"