She found herself liking him, even in the face of the treachery he had practiced against her father and was correspondingly angry, both with herself and at him. She left him without a word and returned to the house. He finished putting the shoes on the colt and as he turned him back into the corral he observed a horseman jogging up the lane at a trail trot. He knew the man for Slade, whose home ranch lay forty miles to the south and a little west, the owner of the largest outfit in that end of the State; a man feared by his competitors, quick to resent an insinuation against his business methods and capable of backing his resentment. Slade dropped from his horse and accorded Harris only a casual nod as he headed for the house. Slade's face was of a peculiar cast. The black eyes were set very close together in a wide face; his cheek bones were low and oddly protruding, sloping far out to a point below each eye. His small ears were set so close to his skull that the outcropping cheek bones extended almost an inch beyond them to either side. Yet there was a certain fascination about his face and bearing that appealed to the spark of the primitive in women; that last lingering cell that harks fondly back to men in the raw. His age might have been anywhere above twenty-six and under fifty-six. He walked through the cookhouse and opened the door of the girl's quarters without the formality of a knock, as if a frequent visitor and sure of his privileges. "How many times have I told you to knock?" she demanded. "The next time you forget it I'll go out as you come in." Slade dropped into a chair. "I never have knocked--not in twelve years," he said. "It was somewhat different when I was a small girl and you were only a friend of my father," she pointed out. "But now----" "But now that I've come to see you as a woman it's different?" he inquired. "No reason for that." She switched the channel of conversation and spoke of the coming round-up, of the poor condition of range stock owing to the severity of the winter; but it was a monologue. For a time the man sat and listened, as if he enjoyed the sound of her voice, contributing nothing to the conversation himself, then suddenly he stirred in his chair and waved a hand to indicate the unimportance of the topics. "Yes, yes; true enough," he interrupted. "But I didn't come to talk about that. When are you coming home with me, Billie?" "And you can't come if you insist on talking about that," she countered. "I'll come," he stated. "Tell me when you're going to move over to the Circle P." "Not ever," she said. "I'd rather be a man's horse than his wife. Men treat women like little tinsel queens before, and afterwards they answer to save a cook's wages and drudge their lives out feeding a hunch of half-starved hands--or else go to the other extreme. Wives are either work horses or pets. I was raised like a boy and I want to have a say in running things myself."