“I am of some use to the community after all,” Thaine said with serious face.
“You are a great deal of use to me,” Leigh assured him.
“Oh, anybody else could do all I do for you,” he retorted.
“But I wouldn’t ask anybody else,” the girl replied.
“Not even my mother? She thinks there is no girl like you this side of heaven, or Virginia, anyhow, and she’d have taken it up with father,” Thaine declared.
“I thought of her,” Leigh answered, “but in things like this, it is impossible. You said yourself that no man on Grass River would think it a wise plan. Your father won his fight out here, even his fight against the boom. 260 We have a different wilderness to overcome, I guess. Mine is reclaiming that Cloverdale ranch from the Champers Company and the weeds. I don’t know where your battlefield lies, but you’ll have it, and it’s because you haven’t won yet that I can come to you. You have helped me and you always will.”
“I’m glad you came to me, anyhow,” Thaine assured her.
They sat awhile looking out at the prairies and the line of the river glistening in the gloaming. A faint pink tone edged some gray cloud flakes in the southwest sky and all the scene was restful in the soft evening light.
At last Thaine said thoughtfully: “I haven’t heard the bugle trumpet for my call to battle yet. Maybe I’ll find out down at the University and make everybody proud of me some day as I am proud of you in your fight for a weed-covered quarter of prairie soil. Jo Bennington is always ridiculing country life, and yet she’s pretty fond of Todd Stewart, who is more of a farmer every day.”
A little smile curved the corners of Leigh’s mouth, and Thaine knew her thoughts.