“Yes,” she said, “I wondered if you recognized loveliness when you saw it, or if all this great country only means to you grass and water for cows. Free pasture. A chance to make money.” “Cows,” Robin affirmed, “is part of the game. Nobody could live on just scenery. But I guess I’d like to look off across the prairie when the sun’s shining on it anyhow. It’d be just as good to look at if there wasn’t a cow in Montana. Only if there was no cattle here, we wouldn’t be here to look.” “That’s true, of course,” May admitted. “I wonder if cow-punchers generally have that feeling about this country they go galloping over?” “Some of ’em,” Robin hazarded. “Lots don’t. I’ve seen a college cow-hand or two that made up poetry about the range. Most of us haven’t got the education to say or write what we think. We just whoop when we feel good over anything and let it go at that. People from the East reckon we’re part human, anyway.” “I’m not from the East,” May laughed. “I was born here, within sight of where we sit. And if my father hadn’t made a lot of money in cattle I’d probably be like the cowboys--whoop when I felt good, without knowing why. As it is----” She stopped abruptly. Robin turned sidewise in his saddle. “I expect,” said he, “you’re crammed full of education. You’ve read all the books in the world. You can talk like a professor. And play the piano to beat the band. You’ll marry a French count or an English lord and live in a castle, and wear silk dresses all the time.” May rocked in her saddle. “You’re funny, Robin Tyler,” she chuckled. “Is that your idea of the proper setting for a cattleman’s daughter?” “Well, if she’s got thirty thousand cattle behind her I guess the sky’s the limit,” Robin answered dryly. “Possibly. Thirty thousand cattle is the important thing--in men’s eyes.” There was something in her tone that made Robin momentarily uncomfortable. May sat staring off across the rolling land. “If you have to go to the Bar M Bar, then back to the round-up,” she said at last, “you’ll be riding half the night.” “That don’t worry me,” Robin returned. “But I reckon you want to get home before dark, so I’ll drift.” “I don’t particularly care whether I get home before dark or not,” she answered. “I don’t have to stand guard or go on day herd to-morrow. Don’t you sleep now and then?” “I can sleep when there’s nothin’ else to do,” Robin told her. “I wouldn’t waste time sleepin’ if I could sit on a pinnacle and talk to you.” “Do you like to talk to me?” she inquired demurely. “Sure.” “Why?” The point-blank question, half-amused, half-serious, stumped Robin. He had more or less impulsively uttered the truth as it stirred in him at the moment. The “why” he couldn’t answer, except haltingly. But he did his best. “I don’t know, unless it’s because you seem a heap different from any girl I ever came across,” he replied honestly.