The elder girl felt strangely drawn to him. He returned the interest he inspired. Like Lounsbury, he marked the unusual character of this woman of the far frontier. But he saw further than had the younger man: With her father and sister, she was all firmness and strength, as if she held herself to be the mainstay of the family; yet, now and then, unwittingly, she betrayed qualities that were distinctly opposite. Like Lounsbury, too, when he touched upon the subject of her life it was to inquire if she had spent any of its years in a town. He felt certain that she had not; at the same time, his belief was curiously contradicted by her bearing. "I'll always live on the plains," she said, having told him of the _mesa_ and their migration north; "if I left 'em for a while, I'd learn things I don't know now; and when I came back, maybe I wouldn't be satisfied with the shack, or with dad and Marylyn." "Child, where did you get that thought?" he asked, astonished. "I don't know--only my mother would 'a' been happy in Texas if she'd been born there. But she wasn't, and she wanted her old home till she died." She wanted her old home till she died--it was only a sentence, yet the quiet pathos of it bared to him the tragedy of that mother's exile. "Never a great city, daughter," he advised. "Stay here, menaced by Indians, among rough men and women, with storms and toil besetting you, but never go to a great city. It is close and dirty and paved, and in it no man may fill his lungs with pure air, or touch his feet to God's green earth." "In cities," questioned Dallas, but in a low tone, as if she wished no one to overhear; "in cities, do--do the women dress like me?" She raised herself a little, though without disturbing Marylyn, so that he might see her plain, collarless waist and straight, scant skirt. He gave her a smile--a smile as rare and transforming as her own. She had allowed him a glimpse of her suppressed girlishness. "Would that they did, my daughter," he answered. "I mean in cities like--like--Bismarck," she said, a trifle consciously. "Perhaps--some--eh--let me see." He was perplexed. He saw the eager light in her face; saw that, for some reason, she was striving to compare herself with the women of the settled districts--and to learn from him the very things she had feared might bring dissatisfaction with her life. He did not wish to teach discontent. He would not tell an untruth. So he created a diversion by taking up his ulster and searching in a capacious pocket. "But they--they--don't plow." David Bond brought forth a limp and battered Bible. "No," he said; "no, they--they don't plow." "Ah!" She looked into the fire. Of a sudden, two memories had returned--one, of the passing musicians, with their nudging and insolent smirks; the other, of a man who had leaned back in his saddle and laughed--after all, perhaps, _not_ at her name. "I--I suppose they're more like Marylyn," she faltered.