“Aw, say, I’d a crazy notion you liked Ben,” he retorted, in a huff. “Stay home. Play with Dall. You’re no pardner for a man. You don’t know your mind one darned little minnit. I’ll go alone, an’ what I’ll tell Ben will be aplenty.”

That fired Ina with panic–stricken wrath.

“Don’t you dare,” she flashed.

“Geewhiz! Ina, you’re gettin’ to be a myst’ry,” complained Marvie. “I’ve a hunch you’ll tell dad I run off again.”

“You bet I will, unless you promise,” added Ina, grasping her opportunity.

“All right, I promise to say only what you tell me to,” capitulated Marvie, rather lamely. “I can’t go to see Ben an’ tell him nothin’.”

“Why can’t you?”

“’Cause I’ll have to tell Ben somethin’ you said. We’re on his side of the fence. He knows that. Wasn’t you nice to him over at Hettie Ide’s? Say, it looked so to me. Have you quit all of a sudden? Do you want to be yellow an’ hurt his feelings? There’s that fight he had with Setter. We was tickled to death. Don’t you want him to know it?”

“Wait, Marvie!” implored Ina, succumbing before this bombardment of logic, scorn, and loyalty. The boy was perfectly right. Ben would misunderstand silence. She must send a message—something as kind, as trusting as had been her words to him that night at the Ide ranch. But what? She needed time to think and there stood Marvie eying her with strange disfavor.

“Give Ben my regards,” she began, with misgivings as to where spoken words might lead her. “Tell him I’m glad about the great catch of wild horses. Tell him Sheriff Strobel is——No, never mind——”

“Gee! is that all?” queried Marvie, as she floundered. “Fine lot of guff!”

“Oh, shut up, you—you little devil!” she cried, wildly, driven to desperation. “Tell Ben I was tickled to death when I saw Setter—and knew who’d beaten him. There!” But the momentum and emotion of her words, with the sudden glad light on Marvie’s face, proved her utter undoing. “And tell him—to come over.”

“Now you’re talkin’, Sis,” replied Marvie, suddenly radiant. “I knew you’d come around. But, gosh! you had me guessin’. I’ll leave for Ben’s as soon as I can fork a horse.”

After Marvie had gone and the reaction from her feelings had set in, Ina was sure she would be unhappy, ill, miserable; but she was nothing of the kind. Indeed, she did not know herself. What burn in her cheeks! She wanted to run, sing, dance. How ridiculous to deny youth, hope, love! She was happy for the first time for days because pride and vanity had fallen down before the truth of her heart—happy because she had asked Ben Ide to come to see her. He might not come, but that did not change the fact of her frank invitation. To be sure, she would rather he did not come very soon—at least until she had gained some control over this incorrigibly strange Ina Blaine.