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 of his neighbors he had other interests. He was still a rich man. And of course half the loss was Bessie's. He preferred not to think about Bessie just then.

The morning went on. Herbert made his neat figures in columns and added them. Later on they would go into ledgers, and a good many would be in red ink. But he worked automatically, glancing out of the window as often as he dared. He never saw the great sweep of the valley, treeless save where some stream wound like a green snake from the mountains; or the rolling grassy hills, or the tawny buttes, rising like vast prehistoric monsters of the plain. Or beyond it the distant misty range which bounded it far away to the East. For Herbert that morning there were no mountains rising stark and sheer behind him, no circling golden eagles, no anything.

He was watching Kay perched like a little boy on top of a corral fence while Tom McNair broke a horse.

If he had only known it he need not have worried. Not yet anyhow. Tom was extremely busy, as a man who breaks a horse must be. So far he had spoken to her only once:

"When I get on, you get off."

"What do you mean, get off?"

"Off. Down," he said impatiently. "This pot-gutted bronc's as likely as not to try to butt through or try to climb over. Then where'd you be?"

"I can jump if he tries it."

He paid no more attention to her, got his saddle on, eased into it and then taking his hat off, slapped the creature with it. It blew up immediately. Through the dust Kay, white to the lips, could see a strange mixture of man and snorting, leaping, rearing horse.

"He'll kill you," she yelled; and was astounded to have Tom glance up at her and grin broadly.

"Pretty good on his feet!" he called.

He showed his first disconcertion when, the horse having given up, weary, hard-breathing and covered with foam, he dismounted and picked up from the ground a letter in a pink envelope which had fallen from his pocket. He stroked the creature's dripping neck without glancing at Kay.