"This is the purtiest rattler I've seen this season," he declared with enthusiasm. "Look at the markin' on him. I thought it ud show up kind of nifty laid around the cantle of your saddle. A rattlesnake skin shore makes a purty trimmin', to my notion. Don't know what he was doin' out of his hole so late in the season. He was so chilled I got him easy--an old feller--nine rattles and a button." Kate got off her horse and sat down to watch him while Bowers enumerated the possibilities of snake skins as decorations. "I brought your mail to you," she said when he had finished.--"Letters." "Now who could be writin' to me?" he demanded in feigned innocence. "I'm curious myself, since there's a bushel," she answered dryly. Bowers looked up at the bulging mail sack and colored furiously. Then he blurted out in desperate candor: "I ain't honest, but I won't lie--I been advertisin'." "What for?" The perspiration broke out on Bowers's forehead. "I thought I'd git married, if anybody that looked good to me would have me." "You're not happy, Bowers?" she asked gently. "I ain't sufferin', but I ain't livin' in what you'd call no seventh heaven." Kate smiled at the grim irony of his tone. "It's not up to much, this life of ours out here," she agreed in a low voice. "Nothin' to look forward to--nothin' to look back to," he said bitterly. "I understand," Kate nodded. "I never had as much home life as a coyote," he continued with rebellion in his tone. "A coyote does git a den and a family around him every spring." And he added shortly, "I'm lonesome." They sat in a long silence, Kate with her hands clasped about a knee and looking off at the mountain. She turned to him after a while: "Do you like me, Bowers?" "I shore do." Then she asked with quiet deliberation: "Well enough to--marry me?" Bowers looked at her, speechless. He managed finally: "Are you joshin'?" "No." A prairie dog rose up in front of them and chattered. They both stared at him. Bowers reached over and took her gloved fingers between his two palms--in the same fashion a loyal subject might have touched his queen's hand. "That's a great thing you said to me, Miss Kate. I never expected any such honor ever to come to me. I'd crawl through cut glass and cactus for you. I guess you know it, too, but anything like that would be a mistake, Miss Kate. I ain't in your class." "My class!" bitterly. "What is my class? I'm in one by myself--I don't belong anywhere." She paused a moment, then went on: "We needn't pretend to love each other--we're not hypocrites, but we understand each other, our interests are the same, we are good friends, at least, and in the experiment there might be something better than our present existence." "I want to see you happy," he replied slowly. "I haven't any other wish, and, right or wrong, I'll do anything you say, but I'm as shore as we're settin' here that you'll never find it with me. I thought--I hoped that Disston feller--"