Page:BM Bower - Her Prairie Knight.djvu/64

 and wound up with their feelings hurt worse than his were."

"Is that a dare?" Beatrice threw up her chin with a motion Dick knew of old.

"Not on your life! You better leave him alone; one or the other of you would get the worst of it, and I'd hate to see either of you feeling bad. As I said before, he's a bad man to fool with."

"I don't consider him particularly dangerous—or interesting. He's not half as nice at Sir Redmond." Beatrice spoke as though she meant what she said, and Dick had no chance to argue the point, for Keith pulled up beside them at that moment. Beatrice, seemed inclined to silence, and paid more attention to the landscape than she did to the conversation, which was mostly about range conditions, and the scanty water supply, and the drought.

She was politely interested in Keith's ranch, and if she clung persistently to her society manner, why, her society manner was very pleasing, if somewhat unsatisfying to a fellow fairly drunk with her winsomeness. Keith showed her where she might look straight up the coulee to her brother's ranch, two miles away, and when she wished she 62