"Well, I will--when you're through playing pals," he assured her cruelly. Ward did not know women very well, but he believed curiosity to be one of the strongest traits in the sex. "That's a bargain, William Louisa, and I'll shake hands on it if you like. When you've had enough of this just-friend business, I'll show you how I dig dollars outa wolf-dens." He grinned at the puzzled face of her. It was a riddle, and he had practically put the answer before her, and still she could not see it. There was a little streak of devilment in Ward, and happiness was uncovering the streak. "I never said I was crazy to know," Billy Louise squelched him promptly. "Not that crazy, anyway. I'll live quite as long without knowing, I reckon." She almost won her point--because Ward did not know women very well. He hesitated, gave her a quick, questioning glance, and actually opened his lips to tell her all about it. He got as far as, "Oh, well, I suppose I'll have to--" when Billy Louise saw a rattlesnake in the trail ahead and spurred up to kill it with her rope. She really was crazy to know the answer to the riddle, but a rattlesnake will interrupt anything from a proposal of marriage to a murder. Ward's fingers had gone into the pocket in his shirt where the nugget he had found that morning was sagging the cloth a little. He had been on the point of giving it to Billy Louise, but he let it stay where it was and instead took down his own rope to get after the snake, that had crawled under a bush and there showed a disposition to fight. And since Blue was no fonder of rattlesnakes than he was of mud, Billy Louise could not bring him close enough for a direct blow. "Get back, and I'll show you why I named this cayuse Rattler," Ward shouted. "I'll bet I've killed five hundred snakes with him--" "Almost as many as you have wolves!" Billy Louise snapped back at him and so lost her point just when she had practically gained it. Ward certainly would not tell her, after that stab. Rattler perked his ears forward toward the strident buzzing which once heard is never forgotten, and which is never heard without a tensing of nerves. He sighted the snake, coiled and ready for war in the small shade of a rabbit-bush. He circled the spot warily, his head turned sidewise, and his eyes fixed upon the flattened, ugly head with its thread of a darting tongue. Ward pulled his gun, "threw down" on the snake, and cut off its head with a bullet. "I could have done that myself," Billy Louise asserted jealously. "Well, I forgot. Next time I'll let you do the shooting. I was going to show you how Rattler helps. He'll circle around just right so I can make one swing of the rope do. But Mr. Snake stuck too close to that rabbit brush; and I was afraid if I drove him out of there with my rope, he'd get under those rocks. I'm sorry, Wilhemina. I didn't think."