"You'd take me away?" she asked. "You'd have me give up the claim? To forget what happened?"
"God help me—no! I ask you to share your life with me, your work, your revenge, everything."
"Not yet——"
"I can't bear to see you and Marylyn staying here alone. And I can't stay near enough to protect you as I ought. Matthews is sly. If I meet him, I'll kill him, as I would a wolf. Then, he'll be out of the way. But—suppose he gets ahead of me? does you harm? Your staying here seems all the more terrible to me since I've been East. The idea of your having just Charley to guard, of your plowing and planting and cutting hay——"
She laughed. "Outside work is fine," she said. "Better than cooking over a hot stove or breaking your back over a tub. Men have the best half of things—the air and the sky and the horses. I don't complain. I like my work. Let it make me like a man."
"It couldn't. I don't mean that. You're the womanliest woman I've ever known."
"I don't want you to ever think different."
"Never will. And I don't ask you to chain yourself up in a house. There's a big future in the cow business. We'd take my share of the Clark herd—you'd ride with me—we'd be partners."
"Wait—wait." Temptation was dragging sorely at her heart. She glanced homeward. Behind her, the tall grass was running with the wind. She longed to run with it. Yet——
"I'll wait and wait," he said; "long as you ask, if it's years."