“Oh! Did you see Charlie Shaw?” she asked. “Did he say whether they picked up much of my stuff on Milk River?” “Charlie Shaw is the name of that kid riding for you, eh? Well, I saw him, but he didn’t say much about cattle. And I didn’t ask. I had to step soft around that outfit. I don’t know any of these fellows, you see, and they all persist in taking me for Doc Martin. I suppose I’d have a deuce of a time persuading anybody around here that I wasn’t.” “It’s funny. I keep thinking of you as Doc, myself. You’re really quite different, I think,” she replied thoughtfully. “Somehow, I can’t think of Doc as being dead. Yet he is.” “Very much so,” Rock answered dryly. “And I’m myself, alive, and I wish to stay so. I’ve been wondering if posing as your man, Doc, is, after all, a wise thing for me to do. What do you think?” “You don’t have to,” she said quickly. “I’m sure Elmer Duffy would be relieved to know you aren’t Doc Martin.” “I don’t know about that,” Rock mused. “Elmer might have just as much to brood over if he knew who I really am.” “Why so?” she asked point-blank. Rock didn’t question the impulse to tell her. His instinct to be himself was strong. The pose he had taken with Duffy that morning had arisen from mixed motives. He wasn’t sure he wanted to carry on along those lines. And he most assuredly didn’t want Nona Parke to think him actuated by any quixotic idea of functioning as her protector after her declarations on that subject. * * * * * So he told her concisely why Elmer Duffy might think a feud with Rock Holloway a sacred duty to a dead brother. Nona looked at him with wondering eyes and an expression on her face that troubled Rock, and finally moved him to protest. “Hang it,” he said irritably. “You needn’t look as if I’d confessed to some diabolical murder. Mark Duffy was as hard as they make ’em. He was running it rough on an inoffensive little man who happens to be my friend. I _had_ to interfere. And Mark knew I’d interfere. He brought it on himself. If I hadn’t killed him he would have killed me. That’s what he was looking for.” “Oh, I wasn’t thinking that at all,” she said earnestly. “Of course, you were quite justified. I was just thinking that this explains why Elmer always hated Doc. Doc told me so. He felt it. I suppose it was the resemblance. I don’t see, now, so far as trouble with Elmer is concerned, that it matters much whether you pass as yourself or Doc Martin. You’d have to watch out for Elmer Duffy in either case. I couldn’t trust that man as far as I could throw a bull by the tail.” “Nice estimate of a man that’s in love with you,” Rock chuckled. “You’re a little bit afraid of Elmer, aren’t you?” “No,” she declared. “But he’s brutal at heart. He’s the kind that broods on little things till they get big in his own mind. He would do anything he wanted if he was sure he could get away with it. And he would like to run both me and my ranch.”