Still, Robin had his due share of masculine curiosity along with other male virtues and he did wonder why May seemed to like him. Since most of the mental experience of his life had been objective rather than introspective or analytical, it didn’t occur to Robin that neither wealth nor education nor a considerable knowledge of the world beyond the cow ranges made any great difference to a woman’s feelings as regards a man--not if that man was young, straight as an arrow, as blithe as Pan on a holiday and rode like a centaur for sheer joy of motion. Nor did Robin know that both men and women liked him for qualities it would have taken a May Sutherland fresh from a university to grasp and define. He only knew that people did like him, trusted him--he had never felt the venom of ill feeling until he came up against Mark Steele. Robin had gone joyously up and down the length of three states without ever drawing a gun or striking a blow in anger. He had seen both happen. He had never been so involved. Trouble had always passed him by until now. Well, men did go wrong, and the up-and-coming kind like Mark Steele went to hell with bells on when they did go wrong. He would have to be careful. And if trouble came he would have to cope with it as best he could. That was the philosophic reflection Robin took to bed with him in the Block S camp somewhere near midnight. CHAPTER VIII--“ON WITH THE DANCE” Without incident the Block S trailed its bulky herd across the rolling country between Eagle Creek and Big Sandy. Late September was on the land. The days were still and warm, the air full of a tenuous haze. When the riders went on guard there was a sharp coolness in the night wind, a harbinger of other nights to come when they would grumble and wipe the hoar frost from the seats of their saddles before mounting. But as yet summer held on. The grass waved yellow where it grew tall in the foothills, curled like a brown mat on the wide reach of the plains. Out of these unfenced pastures the Montana beef herds went to market daily in their tens of thousands from a score of shipping points, rolling east to feed a multitude in urban centers and to fatten the bank accounts of the cattle barons. To this stream of outgoing stock the Block S added its quota on a bright autumn day, a week after Robin rode in the twilight with May Sutherland. They did not tarry in town. There was a rising market in Chicago and it was a season of prime beef on the range. Twenty-four hours after the last steer clicked his polished horns against the walls of a slatted car the Block S pitched camp at sundown on Little Eagle, two miles below the Sutherland ranch. The cowboys were going to a dance. It was not to interfere with their work. They would dance instead of sleeping, that was all. A few hours sleep more or less----