"Going into the cattle business?"
"I hardly think so. I don't see my way to anything very clearly yet, but when Senator Nearing comes home I'll give him my resignation—I've already quit. Does that assurance quiet your mind any?"
"If I've been hasty and harsh, and maybe I have, forgive me, Mr. Barrett," she appealed, more like herself, not overriding in the egotism of a cattle baron's sacred rights, he thought. She offered her hand, whitegleaming in the dark. Barrett took it, encased it a moment between both his own, and thus gave her absolution without words.
Barrett made allowance for her breeding, readily forgiving much, but his pride was hurt, as the pride of youth must suffer before it bends down in meekness, or strikes to the by-ways in craft. It hurt him to have her give him such a low rating among men. Without undue egotism he felt this to be untrue.
Barrett believed, he knew, in fact, that he could stand up in a man's place and give and take with the roughest of them on equal terms. It was in this coward's game of gun slinging that he lacked the speed and recklessness of consequences to class as a fighting man. He visualized the men she meant when she spoke of the big ones. Dale Findlay rose in the foreground of the picture; other figures grew distinct in the campfire, pressing behind him. And cattle barons rode into the picture, broad men of lordly bearing, insolent to look upon the weak, ready with fire and shot to drive onward all who trespassed upon their undeeded estates.
Such as these this girl knew, such as these were to
