will talk because you work for me. Number four, I just got to
get acquainted with you, and I just got to get you to see that I
mean fair and all right. Number five, there you are on one side
the gate getting ready to go, and me here on the other side the
gate pretty desperate and bound to say something to make you
reconsider. Number six, I said it. And now and finally, I just
do want you to reconsider."

And, listening to him, pleasuring in the sight of his earnest,
perturbed face and in the simple, homely phrases that but
emphasized his earnestness and marked the difference between him
and the average run of men she had known, she forgot to listen
and lost herself in her own thoughts. The love of a strong man
is ever a lure to a normal woman, and never more strongly did
Dede feel the lure than now, looking across the closed gate at
Burning Daylight. Not that she would ever dream of marrying
him--she had a score of reasons against it; but why not at least
see more of him? He was certainly not repulsive to her. On the
contrary, she liked him, had always liked him from the day she
had first seen him and looked upon his lean Indian face and into
his flashing Indian eyes. He was a figure of a man in more ways
than his mere magnificent muscles. Besides, Romance had gilded
him, this doughty, rough-hewn adventurer of the North, this man
of many deeds and many millions, who had come down out of the
Arctic to wrestle and fight so masterfully with the men of the
South.

Savage as a Red Indian, gambler and profligate, a man without
morals, whose vengeance was never glutted and who stamped on the
faces of all who opposed him--oh, yes, she knew all the hard