Collie approached her hesitatingly. "I just got to say it—after all that's happened. Seems that I could, now."
Louise paled and flushed. "Oh, Collie!" she cried entreatingly. "We have been such good friends. Please don't spoil it all!"
"I know I am a fool," he said, "or I was going to be. But please to take Boyar and go. I'll bring Rally. I was wrong to think you would listen a little."
But Louise remained sitting upon the rock as though she had not heard him. Slowly he stepped toward her, his spurs jingling musically. He caught up one of her gloves and turned it over and over in his fingers with a kind of clumsy reverence. "It's mighty little—and there's the shape of your hand in it, just like it bends when you hold the reins. It seems like a thing almost too good for me to touch, because it means you. I know you won't laugh at me, either."
Louise turned toward him. "No. I understand," she said.
"Here was where Red and I first saw you to know who you was. I used to hate folks that wore good clothes. I thought they was all the same, you and all that kind. But, no, it ain't so. You looked back once, when you were riding away from the jail that time. I was going to look for Red and not go to work at the Moonstone. I saw you look back. That settled it. I was proud to think you cared even anything for a tramp. I was mighty lonesome then. Since, I got to thinking I'd be somebody some day. But I can see where I stand. I'm a puncher, working for the Moonstone. You kind of liked me because I had hard luck when I was a kid. But that made me love you. It ain't wrong, I guess, to love something you can't ever reach up to. It ain't wrong to keep on loving, only it's awful lonesome not to ever tell you about it."
"I'm sorry, Collie," said Louise gently.
"Please don't you be sorry. Why, I'm glad! Maybe you don't think it is the best thing in the world to love a girl. I ain't asking anything but to just go on loving you. Seems like a man wants the girl he loves to know it, even if that is just all. You said I love horses. I do. But loving you started me loving horses. Red said once that I was just living like what I thought you wanted me to be. Red's wise when he takes his time to it. But now I'm living the way I think I want to. I won't ask you to say you care. I guess you don't—that way. But if I ever get rich—then—"
"Collie, you must not think I am different from any other girl. I'm just as selfish and stubborn as I can be. I almost feel ashamed to have you think of me as you do. Let's be sensible about it. You know I like you. I'm glad you care—for—what you think I am."
"That's it. You are always so kind to a fellow that it makes me feel mean to speak like I have. You listened—and I am pretty glad of that."