“I never thought of it that way before,” she said, at last, “but it seems as if it ought to be true.”
“I guess it’s true enough,” Gard frowned a little, deep in thought. “Jinny and I, we used to figure out ’twas, when we talked things over.” He smiled into his companion’s eyes.
“When I think, sometimes, of what men’ll do for money, though,” continued he, “I ’most feel ’s if I didn’t want any of it.”
“But it seems cleaner money, somehow,” Helen interrupted, “it’s different when a man digs it out of the earth. He doesn’t rob, or defraud anybody, then; and think of all it can do!”
“Yes.” There was a slow twinkle in Gard’s eyes as he spoke. “There’s solid satisfaction to me in thinking that one o’ these days, if I want to, I can get Jinny a solid gold collar.”
They laughed together over this bit of foolishness, feeling, suddenly, that they were very good friends. It was almost with a little sense of something unwelcome that Helen, looking across the level plain, saw a horseman in the distance, coming toward the rancho-gate.
“Some one is coming,” she said, studying the approaching figure. “I wonder who it can be; Daddy isn’t expecting anyone.”
Gard turned his head and they watched together.
“It isn’t one of the men,” commented Helen. “He looks cityfied, doesn’t he?”
It was no careless cowboy figure that they watched. Whoever it was rode compactly, elbows down, and the horse was not running, but coming at an easy ’lope.