"No, thank you!"

She said it with such quick, instinctive certainty that he ground his
teeth in resentment. He was the kind of man that always wanted what he
could not get. He began to covet this girl mightily, even while he told
himself that he was a fool for his pains. What was she but an untaught,
country schoolgirl? It would be a strange irony of fate if Buck Weaver
should fall in love with a sheepman's daughter.

"Many people would go far to get my friendship," he told her.

Quietly she looked at him. "The friends of my people are my friends.
Their enemies are mine."

"Yet you said you didn't hate me."

"I thought I did, but I find I don't."

"Not worth hating, I suppose?"

She neither corrected nor rejected his explanation.

He touched his wounded arm as he went on: "If you don't hate me, why
this compliment to me? I reckon good, genuine hate sent that bullet."

The girl colored, but after a moment's hesitation answered:

"Once I shot a coyote when I saw it making ready to pounce on one of our
lambs. I did not hate that coyote."