"It is very rude to speak as slightingly as I did of the former owner. But you see I have watched that brainless blowout thing creep along, season after season, eating up my acres—my sole inheritance, too."
"And you said you didn't go mad," Jerry interposed.
"Yes, but I didn't say I didn't get mad. I have worn out enough profanity on that blowout to stock the whole Sage Brush Valley."
"But you aren't to the last resort, for you do go mad here then, you told me. I wonder you aren't all madmen and women when I think of this country and remember how different I had imagined it would be."
"When we come to the very last ditch, we really have two alternatives—to go mad and to go back East. Most folks prefer the former. But I say again, it's always a long way to the last ditch out on the Sage Brush, so we seldom do either."
"What should I do now? Won't you tell me? I'm really near my last ditch."
Jerry sat with clasped hands, looking earnestly into Joe's face, as she said this. Oh, fair was she, this exquisite white-blossom style of girl, facing her first life-problem, the big problem of living. Joe Thomson made no reply to her question. What could this dainty, untrained creature do with the best of claims? The frank sincerity of his silence made an appeal to her that the wisest advice could not have made just then.
York Macpherson was right when he said that Jim Swaim's child was a type of her own. If Jerry, through her mother's nature, was impulsive and imaginative, from her father she had inherited balance and clear vision. Her young years had heretofore made no call upon her to exercise these qualities. What might have been turned to the frivolous and romantic in one parent, and the hard-headed and grasping in the other, now became saving qualities for the child of these two. In an instant Jerry read the young ranchman's character clearly and foresaw in him a friend and helper. But there was neither romance nor selfishness in that vision.
"Mr. Thomson," the girl began, seriously, "you need not apologize for what you could not help feeling about the condition of my estate and the wrong that has been done to you. I know you do not hold me responsible for it. Let's forget that you thought you had said anything unpleasant to me, for I want to ask your advice."
"Mine!" Joe Thomson exclaimed.