"But look here, Myra,"--he said, pausing with his foot in
the stirrup,--"the girl must have her head, you know. We don't want to put
her in the notion that every man in the world is a villain laying for a
chance to do her harm. There _are_ clean fellows--a few--and it will do
Sibyl good to meet that kind." He swung himself lightly into the saddle.
The woman smiled; "Sibyl could not think that all men are evil, after
knowing her father and you, Mr. Oakley."
The Ranger laughed as he turned Max toward the opening in the cedar
thicket. "Will was what God and Nelly made him, Myra; and I--if I'm fairly
decent it's because Mary took me in hand in time. Men are mostly what you
women make 'em, anyway, I reckon."
"Don't forget that you and Mrs. Oakley are coming for supper to-morrow,"
she called after him.
"No danger of our forgetting that," he answered. "Adios!" And the chestnut
loped easily out of the yard.
Myra Willard kept her place on the porch until the sound of the horse's
galloping feet died away down the canyon. But, as she listened to the
vanishing sound of the Ranger's going, her eyes were looking far away--as
though his words had aroused in her heart memories of days long past.
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