Probably his greatest desire was to see May, to feel her lissome body rest for a moment in his arms. There was a greater thrill in that expectation, a more riotous quickening of his pulse, than in the worst Mark Steele could do. Love was for Robin a far keener, a more disturbing emotion than hate--and he didn’t hate Mark. He despised him. But despising the man did not, as Robin knew, make him any less formidable. Dangerous or not, Mark Steele no longer had the power to make Robin grow moody as he stared out across the plains, nor to hush the song on his lips when he rode. He galloped now through the foothills lilting one of those interminable ditties every range rider knew, the saga of what befell a trail herd between the Staked Plains and the Canada line. The ground was dry and hot, the grass a crisp brown. All the delicate wild flowers, the tender green of spring, had vanished under the brassy glare of a midsummer sun. The streams were dwindling in their pebbly beds. Yet the old charm of the plains held good. That wide land had changed its aspect but intrinsically it remained the same, passing through its orderly cycle of blazing July heat, to verge into brown, still autumn--then white winter, and after that once more the green and beautiful spring. Robin came whistling down the slope into the home ranch. He noted the tents of the round-up on the creek below an irrigated meadow. He hoped both May and her father would be at home and not in town. When he drew up at the porch steps he saw that May, at any rate, was there. Her yellow head showed at an open window. She blew him a kiss with both hands and beckoned him to come in. Robin needed no second invitation. “You glad to see me?” “Glad?” The girl threw back her head and laughed happily. “Oh, Robin, you’re funny. Are you blind?” Robin’s vision was keen enough. He could see the glow in her eyes, the flush that warmed her cheeks, and his ears drank in the note of gladness in her voice. “Well, I like to hear you say it,” he smiled. “Because I haven’t much time to make love. I’m a foreign rider from a distant range and I’ve got to consult your father on business. Likewise I see the Block S camp on the creek, so I reckon Mr. Steele may be present, which makes me keep my weather eye open. Is the owner of the Block S around?” Robin was standing with May in the bend of his arm. He kissed her with the last sentence--and started a trifle at the unexpected answer to the last question--since it came in the unmistakable deep tones of Adam Sutherland himself. “Yes, the owner of Block S is around,” he said. And after a second in which his daughter and his foreman looked at him in silence he continued harshly: “And it looks to me like it stands me in hand to be around.” May’s head went up. The hand that rested on Robin’s shoulder tightened a little in its grasp. Her color flamed. Her eyes took on a different brightness from the soft gleam that had welcomed her lover.