of makin’ up to that oldest girl from Kansas and settlin’ down.  She makes fine pies.  I’ve knew one of her pies to last two hundred miles—­all the way up to Vegas—­they’re that permernent.  She reminds me a heap of my third wife.  Now, allowin’ I did take one more chanct, and make up to that oldest girl, we’d look fine, wouldn’t we, takin’ a weddin’ trip in this here wagon, and not on no railroad!”

Constance was smiling now.  “I’ve got her gentled and comin’ along right easy now,” thought Tom Osby to himself.

“I knowed a feller up in Vegas onct,” he went on, “got married and went plumb to New York, towering around.  He got lost on a ferry-boat down there somewhere, and rode back and forrard all day; and says he to me, ’Blamed if every man in that town didn’t get his boots blacked every day.’  That’s foolish.”

The girl laughed outright, rolling the veil back from her face now, and taking a full look up at the sky, with more enjoyment in life than she had felt for days.  Further conversation, however, was interrupted by a deep snore from the rear of the wagon.

“That,” said Tom Osby, “sounds like the old man had got the potato loose.”

“I’m ashamed of him,” declared Constance.

“Natural,” said Tom; “but why special?”

“He oughtn’t to touch that whiskey.  I hate it.”

“So do I, when it ain’t good.  That in the can is good.  It’s only fair your dad should break even for some of the whiskey he give the Lone Star.  They didn’t have a drop when I got in.  Now, that’s another reason why we ought to have a railroad at Heart’s Desire.  It might prevent a awful stringency, sometime.  There’s Dick McGinnis, why, he nearly—­”

“But it’s not coming.  It will not be built.  They wouldn’t let us in.  We couldn’t get the right of way.”

“Now listen at you!  You mean your daddy couldn’t, nor his lawyer couldn’t.  Of course not.  But you haven’t tried it your own self yet.”

“How could I?”

“Well, you’d a heap more sense than to size up things the way your pa did.  The boys told me all about what happened.  A man out here don’t holler if you beat him fair, but if you stack the cards on him, that’s different.  Dan Anderson done just right.”

“He broke up all our plans,” Constance retorted hotly; and at once flushed at her own speech.

“What was he to do?  Sell out?  Turn the whole town over to you folks?  Soon as he knows what’s up, he throws back the money and tells the road to go to hell.  He kept his promise to me, and to all the other fellers that had spoke to him about lookin’ after their places.  He done right.”

Constance looked for a moment at the far shimmering horizon.  At length she faced about and bravely met Tom Osby’s eyes.  “Yes, he was right,” she said.  “He did what was right.”  But she drew a long breath as she spoke.

“Ma’am,” said Tom Osby, regarding her keenly, “not referrin’ to the fact that you’re squarer than your men folks, I want to say that, speakin’ of game folks, you’re just as game as any man I ever saw.  Lots of women is.  Seems like they have to be game by just not lettin’ on, sometimes.”