his picturesque rigging, and his two guns, their holsters tied so suggestively and forebodingly down. Would her friends be able to see the romance in him? Would they be able to estimate him according to the standards of the world in which he lived, in which he moved so gracefully?
She was aware that, measured by Eastern standards, Ferguson fell far short of the average in those things that combine to produce the polished gentleman. Yet she was also aware that these things were mere accomplishments, a veneer acquired through constant practice—and that usually the person known as "gentleman" could not be distinguished by these things at all—that the real "gentleman" could be known only through the measure of his quiet and genuine consideration and unfailing Christian virtues.
As she rode through the cottonwood, into that deep solitude which brings with it a mighty reverence for nature and a solemn desire for communion with the soul—that solitude in which all affectation disappears and man is face to face with his Maker—she tried to think of Ferguson in an Eastern drawing room, attempting a sham courtesy, affecting mannerisms that more than once had brought her own soul into rebellion. But she could not get him into the imaginary picture. He did not belong there; it seemed that she was trying to force a living figure into a company of mechanical puppets. And so they were—puppets who answered to the pulling strings of precedent and established convention.
But at the same time she knew that this society which she affected to despise would refuse to accept him; that if by any chance he should be given a place in it he would be an object of ridicule, or at the least passive contempt. The world did not want originality; would not welcome in its drawing room the free, unaffected child of nature. No, the world wanted pretense, imitation. It frowned upon truth and applauded the sycophant.
She was not even certain that if she succeeded in making Ferguson a real living character the world would be interested in him. But she had reached that state of mind in which she cared very little about the world's opinion. She, at least, was interested in him.
Upon the same afternoon—for there is no rule for the mere incidents of life—Ferguson loped his pony through the shade of the cottonwood. He was going to visit the cabin in Bear Flat. Would she be at home? Would she be glad to see him? He could not bring his mind to give him an affirmative answer to either of these questions.
But of one thing he was certain—she had treated him differently from the other Two Diamond men who had attempted to win her friendship. Was he to think then that she cared very little whether he came to the cabin or not? He smiled over his pony's mane at the thought. He could not help but see that she enjoyed his visits.
When he rode up to the cabin he found it deserted, but with a smile he remounted Mustard and set out over the river trail, through the cottonwood. He was sure that he would find her on the hill in the flat, and when he had reached the edge of the cottonwood opposite the hill he saw her.
When she heard the clatter of his pony's hoofs she turned and saw him, waving a hand at him.
"I reckoned on findin' you here," he said when he came close enough to be heard.
She shyly made room for him beside her on the rock, but there was mischief in her eye. "It seems impossible to hide from you," she said with a pretense of annoyance.
He laughed as he came around the edge of the rock and sat near her. "Was you really tryin' to hide?" he questioned. "Because if you was," he continued, "you hadn't ought to have got up on this hill—where I could see you without even lookin' for you."
"But of course you were not looking for me," she observed quietly.
He caught her gaze and held it—steadily. "I reckon I was lookin' for you," he said.
"Why—why," she returned, suddenly fearful that something had happened to Ben—"is anything wrong?"
He smiled. "Nothin' is wrong," he returned. "But I wanted to talk to you, an' I expected to find you here."
There was a gentleness in his voice that she had not heard before, and a quiet significance to his words that made her eyes droop away from his with slight confusion. She replied without looking at him.
"But I came here to write," she said.
He gravely considered her, drawing one foot up on the rock and clasping his hands about the knee. "I've thought a lot about that book," he declared with a trace of embarrassment, "since you told me that you was goin' to put real men an' women in it. I expect you've made them do the things that you've wanted them to do an' made them say what you wanted them to say. That part is right an' proper—there wouldn't be any sense of anyone writin' a book unless they could put into it what they thought was right. But what's been botherin' me is this; how can you tell whether the things you've made them say is what they would have said if they'd had any chance to talk? An' how can you tell what their feelin's would be when you set them doin' somethin'?"
She laughed. "That is a prerogative which the writer assumes without question," she returned. "The author of a novel makes his characters think and act as the author himself imagines he would act in the same circumstances."
He looked at her with amused eyes. "That's just what I was tryin' to get at," he said. "You've put me into your book, an' you've made me do an' say things out of your mind. But you don't know for sure whether I would have done an' said things just like you've wrote them. Mebbe if I would have had somethin' to say I wouldn't have done things your way at all."
"I am sure you would," she returned positively.
"Well, now," he returned smiling, "you're speakin' as though you was pretty certain about it. You must have wrote a whole lot of the story."
"It is two-thirds finished," she returned with a trace of satisfaction in her voice which did not escape him.
"An' you've got all your characters doin' an' thinkin' things that you think they ought to do?" His eyes gleamed craftily. "You got a man an' a girl in it?"
"Of course."
"An' they're goin' to love one another?"
"No other outcome is popular with novel readers," she returned.
He rocked back and forth, his eyes languidly surveying the rim of hills in the distance.
"I expect that outcome is popular in real life too," he observed. "Nobody ever hears about it when it turns out some other way."
"I expect love is always a popular subject," she returned smiling.
His eyes were still languid, his gaze still on the rim of distant hills.
"You got any love talk in there—between the man an' the girl?" he questioned.
"Of course."
"That's mighty interestin'," he returned. "I expect they do a good bit of mushin'?"
"They do not talk extravagantly," she defended.
"Then I expect it must be pretty good," he returned. "I don't like mushy love stories." And now he turned and looked fairly at her. "Of course," he said slyly, "I don't know whether it's necessary or not, but I've been thinkin' that to write a good love story the writer ought to be in love. Whoever was writin' would know more about how it feels to be in love."
She admired the cleverness with which he had led her up to this point, but she was not to be trapped. She met his eyes fairly.
"I
