Mona moved a little farther away from him, and when she answered she did not choose her words. “Of all things,” she said, evenly, “I admire a brave man and despise a coward. You were chicken-hearted that day, and you know it; you've just admitted it. Why, in another minute I'd have had that gun myself, and I'd have shown you--but Park got it before I really had a chance. I hated to seem spectacular, but it served you right. If you'd had any nerve I wouldn't have had to sit there and tell you what to do. If ever I marry anybody, Mr. Thurston, it will be a man.” “Which means, I suppose, that I'm not one?” he asked angrily. “I don't know yet.” Mona smiled her unpleasant smile--the one that did not belong in the story he was going to write. “You're new to the country, you see. Maybe you've got nerve; you haven't shown much, so far as I know--except when you talked to the boys that night. But you must have known that they wouldn't hurt you anyway. A man must have a little courage as much as I have; which isn't asking much--or I'd never marry him in the world.” “Not even if you--liked him?” his smile was wistful. “Not even if I loved him!” Mona declared, and fled into the house. Thurston gathered himself together and went down to the stable and borrowed a horse of Jack, who had just got back from town, and rode home to the Lazy Eight. When Hank heard that he was home to stay--at least until he could join the roundup again--he didn't say a word for full five minutes. Then, “Got your story done?” he drawled, and his eyes twinkled. Thurston was going up the stairs to his old room, and Hank could not swear positively to the reply he got. But he thought it sounded like, “Oh, damn the story!” CHAPTER IX. THE DRIFT OF THE HERDS Weeks slipped by, and to Thurston they seemed but days. His world-weariness and cynicism disappeared the first time he met Mona after he had left there so unceremoniously; for Mona, not being aware of his cynicism, received him on the old, friendly footing, and seemed to have quite forgotten that she had ever called him a coward, or refused to marry him. So Thurston forgot it also--so long as he was with her. How he filled in the hours he could scarcely have told; certain it is that he accomplished nothing at all so far as Western stories were concerned. Reeve-Howard wrote in slightly shocked phrases to ask what was keeping him so long; and assured him that he was missing much by staying away. Thurston mentally agreed with him long enough to begin packing his trunk; it was idiotic to keep staying on when he was clearly receiving no benefit thereby. When, however, he picked up a book which he had told Mona he would take over to her the next time he went, he stopped and considered: