“Don’t intend to be.” Rock grinned. “I never did take life very seriously. I sure don’t aspire to begin the minute I find myself working for you. I’m a poor but honest youth, with my way to make in the world. Is it silly for a man to admire a woman--any woman?” “I wish you’d pull those weeds out of that lettuce patch,” she said, changing the subject abruptly. “They grow so quickly. I’m always at these infernal weeds. After you get that done, roll up your bed and bring it to the house. There’s lots of room.” * * * * * Rock performed the weeding in half an hour. If another had asked him to do that, he would probably have told him to go hire a gardener, he reflected. “She’ll have me baking bread and working the churn next,” he chuckled to himself. “Trust Miss Nona Parke to get her money’s worth out of the hired man.” That was an exaggeration. Nona wasn’t a driver. Within a week Rock found himself doing various jobs about the ranch because he saw that they needed doing, not because she told him to do them. He rode more or less every day, and most of the time Nona rode with him. It was easier, if less exciting and glamorous, than round-up. He had a comfortable bed in a big room, with a huge stone fireplace, which had been the bunk room when the TL had a dozen riders and cattle by the thousand. Between Nona and the half-breed girl, the vegetable garden and the two milch cows, Rock ate better food than had fallen to his lot since he was at school on the Atlantic seaboard. It was pleasant to live there, pleasant to ride range with this dark-haired, competent young person, who could be brusque and curt when she chose, and self-sufficient at all times. They went clattering away from the ranch in the cool of morning. They combed far coulee heads, hidden springs, river bottoms above and below the ranch. Rock was never quite sure what the girl looked for in these long rides. The only actual stock work they did was to throw back straggling bunches that grazed beyond certain limits. That, as Rock understood the range business, was not important. He concluded that Nona simply had a passion for looking over her possessions. He had seen men like that--men who owned longhorns by the tens of thousands.