Lonesome Land by B. M. Bower

get awful lonesome—”
    She turned her face toward him quickly, as if he were the first person who had understood her blank loneliness. “That,” she told him, in an odd, hesitating manner, “atones for
the—the ‘joshing.’ No one seems to realize—”
    “Why don’t you get out and ride around, or do something beside stick right here in this coulee like a—a cactus?” he demanded, with a roughness that somehow was grateful
to her. “I’ll bet you haven’t been a mile from the ranch since Man brought you here. Why don’t you go to town with him when he goes? It’d be a whole lot better for
you—for both of you. Have you got acquainted with any of the women here yet? I’ll gamble you haven’t!” He was waving the handkerchief gently like a flag, to dry it.
    Val watched him; she had never seen anyone hold a handkerchief by the corners and wave it up and down like that for quick drying, and the expedient interested her, even while she was wondering
if it was quite proper for him to lecture her in that manner. His scolding was even more confusing than his teasing.
    “I’ve been down to the river twice,” she defended weakly, and was angry with herself that she could not find words with which to quell him.
    “Really?” He smiled down at her indulgently. “How did you ever manage to get so far? It must be all of half a mile!”
    “Oh, you’re perfectly horrible!” she flashed suddenly. “I don’t see how it can possibly concern you whether I go anywhere or not.”
    “It does, though. I’m a lot public-spirited. I hate to see taxes go up, and every lunatic that goes to the asylum costs the State just that much more. I don’t know an easier
recipe for going crazy than just to stay off alone and think. It’s a fright the way it gets sheep-herders, and such.”
    “I’m such, I suppose!”
    Kent glanced at her, approved mentally of the color in her cheeks and the angry light in her eyes, and laughed at her quite openly.
    “There’s nothing like getting good and mad once in a while, to take the kinks out of your brain,” he observed. “And there’s nothing like lonesomeness to put
’em in. A good fighting mad is what you need, now and then; I’ll have to put Man next, I guess. He’s too mild.”
    “No one could accuse you of that,” she retorted, laughing a little in spite of herself. “If I were a man I should want to blacken your eyes—” And she blushed hotly
at being betrayed into a personality which seemed to her undignified, and, what was worse, unrefined. She turned her back squarely toward him, started down the path, and remembered that she had not
filled the water bucket, and that without it she could not consistently return to the house.
    Kent interpreted her glance, went sliding down the steep bank and recovered the pail; he was laughing to himself while he rinsed and filled it at the spring, but he made no effort to explain his
amusement. When he came back to where she stood watching him, Val gave her head a slight downward tilt to indicate her thanks, turned, and led the way back to the house without a word. And he,
following after, watched her slim figure swinging lightly down the hill before him, and wondered vaguely what sort of a hell her life was going to be, out here where everything was different from
what she had been accustomed to, and where she did not seem to “fit into the scenery,” as he put it.
    “You ought to learn to ride horseback,” he advised unexpectedly.
    “Pardon me—you ought to learn to wait until your advice is wanted,” she replied calmly, without turning her head. And she added, with a sort of defiance: “I do not feel
the need of either society or diversion, I assure you; I am perfectly contented.”
    “That’s real nice,” he approved. “There’s nothing like being satisfied with what’s handed out to you.” But, though he spoke with much unconcern, his
tone betrayed his skepticism.
    The others had finished eating and