Robin looked away down Birch Creek toward the Bar M Bar, thinking of Ivy Mayne being urged along a way that promised unhappiness, driven by impulses her dumb sullen heart could never fathom. Robin had lived all his young life close to nature, striving with nature. He had no bookish sophistication, but he was keenly alive, his mind kindled easily. He had a keen sense of the remorselessness of natural law. Nature’s ways were sometimes dark in getting her business done. The individual wasn’t so much, just as a single animal in a herd was of no great consequence--but the herd counted. The pain and passion of mating and begetting and dying were no mysteries to Robin. What he didn’t know he could dimly grasp. Passion was sometimes wrapped up and obscured in material complexities. Conflict was inherent in life itself, from the time a man drew his first breath until he breathed his last. Looking away toward that hidden ranch he could visualize Ivy with Mark a sinister figure in the background. He felt sorry for her. In the same breath he wondered if May was at the home ranch. Somehow he hadn’t wanted to ask. He shook himself out of these reflections and rode on. He had to dip into a coulee, cross a little ridge, traverse a horse pasture and pass the house to reach the camp. He dipped into the hollow. As he topped the opposite crest a head appeared, a head surmounted by yellow hair, a pair of shoulders clad in a cream-colored blouse. Close by this figure seated on a flat rock a chestnut horse that might have been a twin brother to Red Mike stood with trailing reins. Robin drew up beside this vision, answered the smile of greeting, got down and seated himself beside May. “I guess I’m kinda unexpected,” he observed. “Not so much,” she told him. “I heard you were back.” “The boys would talk, I expect,” he remarked. “Still, I guess I have some news they couldn’t spread.” “Yes?” she looked curious. “Might not interest you much, at that,” Robin drawled. “The Block S has a new range boss.” “You?” she breathed. Her eyes danced. “Good guess,” Robin said. “Kinda sudden. I don’t know which is the most surprised, me or your dad.” “I’m glad,” May smiled. Then she sobered. “What happened to Mark Steele? Did you meet him?” “Yes, I met him,” Robin answered truthfully. “Nothing happened. Maybe something’ll happen later. I don’t know. Don’t care.” “I wonder why he said he shot himself by accident last winter?” the girl murmured. “To save his face, I reckon. He’s proud. He don’t like to be beaten. I did beat him that time.” May stirred uneasily. “A girl can stir up a lot of trouble sometimes,” she said. “It wasn’t a girl. I told you that before.” “There _was_ a girl, wasn’t there,” she whispered. “There was, but there isn’t no more.”