She hesitated a moment, then answered coldly: "Nothing in particular--everything." "You mean you don't want to tell me?" "What's the use?" indifferently. "I might help you." "How?" "In ways that friends can help each other." "I've tried that," she answered dryly. "You've grown so self-sufficient that you make me feel superfluous and helpless." "A clinging vine that has nothing to cling to sprawls on the ground, doesn't it?" Since he did not answer immediately, she reminded him: "Better loosen your horse's cinch; he'll feed better." He glanced at her oddly as he obeyed her. How practical she was! What she said was the right and sensible thing, of course, but was she, as she seemed, quite without sentiment? He returned to his place beside her and they sat without speaking, watching the colors change on a bank of sudslike clouds and the shadows deepen in the gulches. It never occurred to the new Kate to make conversation, so she was unembarrassed by the silence. Save for an occasional whimsical soliloquy, she seldom spoke without a definite purpose nowadays. To Disston, who remembered her faculty for finding something interesting or amusing in everything about which to chatter, the difference was noticeable. It saddened him, the change in her, yet he was conscious that she still retained her strong attraction for him. With nerves relaxed, content, he had an absurd notion that he could sit beside her on that rock indefinitely, without speaking, and be happy. Kate did not ask him the purpose of his visit, for her etiquette was the etiquette of the ranges, which does not countenance questions, and Disston, absorbed in the beauty of the sunset and his own thoughts, was in no mood to introduce the unpleasant subject of the dynamiting of the sheep wagon. The pink deepened on gypsum cliffs and sandstone buttes of the distant Bad Lands, while purple shadows crept over the green foothills and blackened the canyons. "Isn't it wonderful?" he said, finally, in a half whisper. "Yes," she replied, huskily, wondering if Heaven itself had anything like this to offer. It seemed as though without his volition his hand sought hers and covered it. She left it so for a moment, then took hers away and got up abruptly. "They are working up to the bed-ground and will lie down pretty soon. When they're settled, I'll go to camp and get you something to eat." Her tone was matter-of-fact, casual. She stooped, and, picking up a pebble, tossed it at two bucks that were butting each other violently: "Here--you! Stop it! You give me a headache to look at you." He did not even interest her, that was evident. Disston tried to assure himself that he would not have it otherwise, that anything else would be a misfortune in the circumstances; but self-deception was useless--his feelings were not a matter for argument or logic, they were of the heart, not the head, when he was near her, and his mind had nothing to do with them.