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EAR DOWLING:

I have always done business with my cards on the table, or most of them anyhow. I understand your position and realize that you find the present situation fairly unpleasant. But I am on the ground as to it, and you are not.

In the first place, I have an old-fashioned idea that when two people are joined together they ought to have a chance to try it out anyhow. Maybe they can make it go, maybe not, but they are entitled to their chance.

You are not going to like this letter, but first I want to tell you one thing. Your girl is going to stick. I don't imagine it has been all honey and roses, but she cares for McNair and I believe he cares for her. He is a hot-tempered devil, but he is considerable of a man for all that. He may not know how to use his fork—I don't know—but he knows the cattle business, and at the present moment I am banking on him. Literally. I have loaned him money enough to make a small start, and the rest is up to him. They have a little place on the Reservation—the post office is Judson, if you care to know—and she has fixed it up in good shape. I am banking on her too; there is a good bit of old L. D. in her. Yours sincerely,

Kay never forgot that home-coming of hers, the bleak dreariness of the deserted ranch house in the rain, the isolation, the dirt. Nothing had prepared her for it. But's he never forgot, either, the care Tom took of her that first night. The wood he cut and the fire he built, the superhuman energy with which he moved about, lame as he was; bringing in and setting up the bed, carrying in food, chop-