This sweet-faced, soft-voiced girl was walking straight into another heart in the Sage Brush Valley. Nature had given her that heritage, wherever she might go.
"Yes, your advice, please." Jerry went on. "You have watched that sand spreading northward over your claim. You have had days, months, years, maybe, to see the blowout doing its work. I awakened suddenly one morning from a beautiful day-dream. My only heritage left of all the fortune I had been brought to expect to be mine, the inheritance I had idealized with all the romantic beauty and prosperity possible to rural life, in a minute all this turned to a desert before my eyes. You belong to the West. Tell me, won't you, what is next for me?"
"What could I tell you, Miss Swaim?" Joe asked.
"Tell me what to do, I mean," Jerry exclaimed. "Tell me quickly, for I am right against the bread-line now."
For a moment Joe stared at the girl in amazement. Her earnestness left no room to misunderstand her. But his senses came back quickly, as one whose life habit it had been to meet and answer hard questions suddenly.
"Why not go back East?" he asked.
"One of your two last resorts; the other one is madness. I won't do it," Jerry said, stubbornly. "Shall I tell you why?"
It was a delicious surprise to the young ranchman to be taken into the confidence of this charming, gracious girl. The honeysuckle leaves, stirred by the soft night breeze that came purring across the open plain, gave the moonbeams leave to play with the rippling gold of her hair, and to flutter ever so faintly the soft white draperies of her gown. Her big dark eyes, her fair white throat and shoulders, the faint pink hue of her cheeks, the shapely white arms below the elbow-frilled sleeves, her soft voice, her frank trust in his judgment and integrity, made that appeal that rarely comes to a young man's heart oftener than once in a lifetime.
"My father lived a rich man and died a poor man, leaving me—for mother went first—to the care of his wealthy sister. A half-forgotten claim on the Sage Brush is my only possession after two years of litigation and all that sort of thing." Jerry paused.
"Well?" Joe queried.