Patricia read this over twice with her lips buttoned in tightly. Then she licked the pencil again--indelibly marking her pink tongue for an inch down the middle--and inserted just before the ’phone number, the word “_permanent_” and drew two lines underneath for emphasis. This was meant as a trenchant warning to Gary Marshall that he need not trouble himself any further concerning Patricia’s investment nor about Patricia herself, for that matter. Patricia paid the display ad rate and marched out, feeling as irrevocably committed to cynical maidenhood as if she had taken the veil. Men as such were weak, vain creatures who thought to hold the heart of a woman in the curve of an eyelash. Meaning, needless to say, Gary Marshall’s eyelash which should _not_ longer hold the heart of Patricia Connolly. Patricia’s telephone began ringing at six o’clock on Sunday morning and continued ringing spasmodically until ten minutes past twelve, when Patricia dropped the receiver off the hook and let it dangle, thereby giving the busy signal whenever 11270 was dialed. For six hours and ten minutes Patricia had felt a definite sinking sensation in her chest when a strange voice came to her over the ’phone. She would have wanted to murder any one who so much as hinted that she hoped to hear Gary say expostulatingly, “For heck’s sake, Pat, what’s the big idea of this ad? I can’t _feature_ it!” Had she heard that, Patricia would have gloried in telling him, with the voice that went with the square chin, that she was sorry, but the place was already taken. Then she would have hung up and waited until he recovered from that wallop and called again. Then--well, Patricia had not decided definitely just what she would do, except that she was still firmly resolved upon being an old maid. At seven o’clock in the morning the first man called to see her. Patricia was ready for him, clothed in her office tailored suit and her office manner. The man’s name was Hawkins, and he seemed much surprised to find that a young woman owned the “small cattle ranch in Nevada.” Hawkins informed Patricia, in the very beginning of their conversation, that he was a fair man who never yet had cheated any one out of a nickel. He said that if anything he was too honest, and that this was the reason why he hadn’t a ranch of his own and was not independent. He said that he invariably let the other fellow have the big end of a bargain, rather than have the load on his conscience that he had possibly not been perfectly square. As to cheating a woman, well, he hinted darkly that killing was too good for any man who would take advantage of a woman in a business deal. Hawkins was so homely that Patricia knew he must be honest as he said he was. She believed practically everything he said, and by eight o’clock on a calm Sunday morning, P. Connolly and James Blaine Hawkins were partners in the ranch at Johnnywater.