"How do you know?" she said. "What do you mean?" As she spoke she felt the tears come again on her cheeks, felt her hands trembling. "Well, ma'am, I know mighty well I'll never marry now. Of course, if one sort of woman had came out here--big and strong enough to be a housekeeper and nothing else, and all that, and one thing with another--I won't say what might have happened. Strange things has happened that way--right out of them damn _Hearts Aflame_ ads--right around along in here, in this here valley, too, I know. Well, of course, a man can't get along so well, ranching, unless he has a wife----" "Or a housekeeper?" "Why, yes. That's what we advertised fer. I didn't know it." Mary Warren pondered for a long time. "Look at me," she said at last. "There's no place for me back home, and none here. What sort of housekeeper would I make--and what sort of--of--wife? I'm disappointing you; and you're disappointing me. What shall we both do?" "Why, how do you mean?" said Sim Gage, wonderingly. "Disappoint you? Of course I couldn't marry a woman like you! You don't want me to do _that_? That wouldn't be right." "Oh, I don't mean that! I don't know what I did mean!" Some sense of her perturbation must have come to him. "Now don't you worry, ma'am. Don't you git troubled none a-tall. I'm a-goin' to take care of you myself until everything gits all right." "I'm a thief! I'm a beggar!" was all she could say. "The same here, ma'am! You've got nothing on me," said Sim Gage. "What I said is, we're in the same boat, and we got to go the best way we can till things shapes out. It ain't very much I got to offer you. Us sagebrushers has to take the leavings." "You've said the truth for me--the very truth. I'm of the discard--I can't earn my living. Leavings! And I wanted to earn my living." "You've earned it now, ma'am," said Sim Gage; and perhaps made the largest speech of all his life. "Well, anyways, we're going to come to my land right now," he added after a time. "We've passed the school house, only couple mile from my place. On ahead here is Wid Gardner's ranch, on the left hand side. I don't reckon he's at home. I told you the school ma'am had maybe went off to her homestead, didn't I? Maybe Nels Jensen, he's maybe driving her to the Big Springs station down below. This here is Wid Gardner's team and buckboard, ma'am. I ain't got around to fixing mine up this spring. I've got to drive back after a while and take these things back to Wid." Her situation grew more tense. They were coming now to the end of the journey--to her home--to his home. She did not speak. To her ears the sound of the horses' feet seemed less, as though they were passing on a road not so much used. "This is a sort of alley, like, down along between the willers and the rail fence," explained Sim Gage. "It's about half a mile of this. Then we come to my gate."