"Now, why did I go off and leave her like that? Like an actor walking off the stage to make room for the other fellow to come on and say his lines. There's no other fellow--thank heck! And here are two miles we might be riding together--and me preaching to her about taking the little, pleasant things that come unexpectedly!" He swung his horse around in the trail, meaning to ride back; retraced his steps as far as the hollow, and turned again, shaking his head. "Anybody could stop at the schoolhouse just as school's out, and ride a couple of miles down the road with the schoolma'am--if she let him do it! Anybody could do that. But that isn't the reason, why I'm riding on ahead. What the hell is the reason?" He stopped again on the high level where he could look back and see the Whipple shack squatted forlornly in the gray stretch of sage with wide, brown patches of dead grass between the bushes. "Lonesome," he named the wild expanse of unpeopled range land. "She's terribly lonely--and sweet. Too lonely and sweet for me to play with, to ride a few miles with--and leave her lonelier than I found her. I couldn't. There's enough sadness now in those Scotch blue eyes. Damned if I'll add more!" He saw Mary Hope come from the shack, pause a minute on the doorstep, then walk out to where her horse was tied to the post. He lifted the reins, pricked his horse gently with the spurs and galloped away to Jumpoff, singing no more. CHAPTER TWELVE SHE WILL, AND SHE WON'T Cottonwood Spring was a dished-out oasis just under the easy slope of Devil's Tooth Ridge. From no part of the Jumpoff trail could it be seen, and the surrounding slope did not offer much inducement to cattle in March, when water was plentiful; wherefore riders would scarcely wander into the saucer-like hollow that contained the cottonwoods and the spring. A picnic had once been held there, but the festivities had been marred by a severe thunderstorm that came just as a wordy quarrel between two drunken cowpunchers was fast nearing the gun-pulling stage. Lightning had struck the side hill just beyond the grove, and the shock of it had knocked down and stunned the two disputants, and three saddle horses standing in the muddy overflow from the spring. For this reason, perhaps, and because it was on Lorrigan land, the place had never thereafter been frequented save by the stock that watered there. But from the head of the little basin a wide view was had of the broken land beyond Devil's Tooth. The spring was clear and cold and never affected by drouth. By following the easy slope around the point of the main trail from Jumpoff to the Lorrigan ranch, no road-building was necessary, and in summer the cottonwoods looked very cool and inviting--though at certain times they harbored buffalo gnats and many red ants that would bite, which rendered the shade less grateful than it looked. But to the Lorrigans it seemed an ideal site for a schoolhouse.