Page:Caroline Lockhart--The Fighting Shepherdess.djvu/330

 I'd crawl through cut glass and cactus for you. I guess you know it, too, but anything like that would be a mistake, Miss Kate. I ain't in your class."

"My class! " bitterly. " What is my class? I'm in one by myself — I don't belong anywhere." She paused a moment, then went on : " We needn't pretend to love each other — we're not hypocrites, but we understand each other, our interests are the same, we are good friends, at least, and in the experiment there might be something better than our present existence."

" I want to see you happy," he replied slowly. " I haven't any other wish, and, right or wrong, I'll do anything you say, but I'm as shore as we're settin' here that you'll never find it with me. I thought — I hoped that Disston feller — "

She interrupted sharply:

"Don't, Bowers, don't!"

Understanding grew in his troubled eyes as he looked at her quivering chin and mouth.

" So that was it! " he reflected.

Thick volumes of smoke rolled up from the engine attached to the mixed train that stood on the side-track which paralleled the shipping corrals at Prouty, to sink again in the heavy atmosphere presaging a storm. .The clouds were leaden and sagged with the weight of snow about to fall.

I'eeters's cattle bawled in the three front cars and the remaining " double deckers " were being loaded with Kate Prentice's sheep. She had followed her early judgment in cutting down the number of her sheep for a hard winter and, in consequence, the engine had steam up to haul the longest stock train that had ever pulled out of Prouty.