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Database Systems: Instructor’s Guide - Part
III

Database Systems A Practical Approach to


Design Implementation and Management 6th
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Chapter 2 Database Environment

Review Questions

2.1 Discuss the concept of data independence and explain its importance in a database environment.

See Section
2.1.5

2.2 To address the issue of data independence, the ANSI-SPARC three-level architecture
was proposed. Compare and contrast the three levels of this model.

See Section
2.1

2.3 What is a data model? Discuss the main types of data models.

An integrated collection of concepts for describing and manipulating data, relationships


between data, and constraints on the data in an organization. See Section 2.3.

Object-based data models such as the Entity-Relationship model (see Section 2.3.1).
Record- based data models such as the relational data model, network data model, and
hierarchical data model (see Section 2.3.2). Physical data models describe how data is stored
in the computer (see Section 2.3.3).

2.4 Discuss the function and importance of conceptual modeling.

See Section
2.3.4.

2.5 Describe the types of facility you would expect to be provided in a multi-user DBMS.

Data Storage, Retrieval and Update Authorization Services


A User-Accessible Catalog Support for Data Communication
Transaction Support Integrity Services
Concurrency Control Services Services to Promote Data Independence
Recovery Services Utility Services

7
Database Systems: Instructor’s Guide - Part
III See also Section
2.4

2.6 Of the facilities described in your answer to Question 2.5, which ones do you think would
not be needed in a standalone PC DBMS? Provide justification for your answer.

Concurrency Control Services - only single


user.
Authorization Services - only single user, but may be needed if different individuals are to use
the
DBMS at different
times.
Utility Services - limited in
scope.
Support for Data Communication - only standalone
system.

8
Database Systems: Instructor’s Guide - Part
III

2.7 Discuss the function and importance of the system catalog.

See Section 2.4, Service (2) – User-accessible


catalog.

2.8 Discuss the differences between DDL and DML? What operations would you typically
expect to be available in each language?

DDL - A language that allows the DBA or user to describe and name the entities, attributes,
and relationships required for the application, together with any associated integrity
and security constraints.

DML - A language that provides a set of operations to support the basic data
manipulation operations on the data held in the database.

See Section
2.2.2.

2.9 Discuss the differences between procedural DMLs and nonprocedural DMLs?

Procedural DML - A language that allows the user to tell the system what data is needed
and exactly how to retrieve the data.

Nonprocedural DML - A language that allows the user to state what data is needed rather
than how it is to be retrieved.

See Section
2.2.2.

2.10 Name four object-based data models.

• Entity-Relationship (ER)
• Semantic
• Functional
• Object-

oriented. See

Section 2.3.1.

2.11 Name three record-based data models. Discuss the main differences between these
data models.

• relational data model - data and relationships are represented as tables, each of
which has a number of columns with a unique name
• network data model - data is represented as collections of records, and relationships
are

9
Database Systems: Instructor’s Guide - Part
III represented by sets. Compared with the relational model, relationships are explicitly
modeled by the sets, which become pointers in the implementation. The records
are organized as generalized graph structures with records appearing as nodes (also
called segments) and sets as edges in the graph

1
0
Database Systems: Instructor’s Guide - Part
III

• hierarchical data model - restricted type of network model. Again, data is represented
as collections of records and relationships are represented by sets. However, the
hierarchical model allows a node to have only one parent. A hierarchical model can be
represented as a tree graph, with records appearing as nodes (also called segments) and
sets as edges.

See Section
2.3.2.

2.12 What is a transaction. Give an example of a transaction.

A transaction is a series of actions, carried out by a single user or application program,


which accesses or changes the contents of the database.

See Section
2.4.

2.13 What is concurrency control and why does a DBMS need a concurrency control facility?

A mechanism to ensure that the database is updated correctly when multiple users
are updating the database concurrently.

This avoids inconsistencies from arising when two or more transactions are executing and
at least one is updating the database.

See Section
2.4.

2.14 Define the term "database integrity". How does database integrity differ from database
security?

“Database integrity” refers to the correctness and consistency of stored data: it can
be considered as another type of database protection. Although integrity is related to
security, it has wider implications: integrity is concerned with the quality of data itself.
Integrity is usually expressed in terms of constraints, which are consistency rules that the
database is not permitted to violate.

See Section 2.4.

Exercises

2.15 Analyze the DBMSs that you are currently using. Determine each system’s compliance with
the functions that we would expect to be provided by a DBMS. What type of language does
each system provide? What type of architecture does each DBMS use? Check the
accessibility and extensibility of the system catalog. Is it possible to export the system catalog
to another system?

1
1
Database Systems: Instructor’s Guide - Part
III To do this you will need to obtain appropriate information about each system. There should
be manuals available or possibly someone in charge of each system who could supply the
necessary information.

1
2
Database Systems: Instructor’s Guide - Part
III

2.16 Write a program that stores names and telephone numbers in a database. Write another
program that stores names and addresses in a database. Modify the programs to use external,
conceptual, and internal schemas. What are the advantages and disadvantages of this
modification?

The programs can be written in any suitable language and should be well structured
and appropriately commented. Two distinct files result. The structures can be combined
into one containing name, address, and telNo, which can be the representation of both the
internal and conceptual schemas. The conceptual schema should be created separately with
a routine to map the conceptual to the internal schema. The two external schemas also must
be created separately with routines to map the data between the external and the conceptual
schema. The two programs should then use the appropriate external schema and routines.

2.17 Write a program that stores names and dates of birth in a database. Extend the program so
that it stores the format of the data in the database; in other words, create a system catalog.
Provide an interface that makes this system catalog accessible to external users.

Again, the program can be written in any suitable language. It should then be modified to add
the data format to the original file. This should not be difficult, if the original program
is well structured. The interface for other users operates on the data dictionary and is separate
from the original program. A menu-based interface is adequate.

10
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The others exchanged bulletins with him. He was, he said, as
rampageous as a long-legged hill two-year-old.
“Mr. Hollister!” Betty quavered.
The engineer was nowhere to be seen. They called, and no answer
came. Betty’s heart dropped like a plummet. She turned upon her
father anguished eyes. They begged him to do something. He
noticed that her cheeks were blanched, the color had ebbed from her
lips. His daughter’s distress touched him nearly. He could not stand
that stricken look.
“I’ll find him,” he promised.
Jammed between two trees, upside down, with one end sticking out
of the snow, they found the wagon bed at the bottom of the ravine.
Forbes spoke to Reed in a low voice, for his ears alone.
“Not a chance in fifty of findin’ him in all this snow, an’ if we do, he’ll
not be alive.”
“Yes,” agreed the ranchman. “If a fellow knew where to look. But no
telling where the snow carried him.”
“Might still be under the wagon bed, o’ course.”
“Might be.”
A low groan reached them. They listened. It came again, from under
the bed of the wagon apparently.
“He’s alive,” Clint called to Betty.
The drooping little figure crouched in the snow straightened as
though an electric current had been shot through it. The girl waded
toward them, eager, animate with vigor, pulsing with hope.
“Oh, Dad. Let’s hurry. Let’s get him out.”
Reed rapped the wagon bed with his knuckles. “How about it,
Hollister? Hurt much?”
“Knocked out,” a weak voice answered. “Guess I’m all right now. Arm
scraped a bit.”
The handle of a shovel stuck out of the snow like a post. Lon worked
it loose, tore the lower part free, and brought it to the bed. He began
to dig. Reed joined him, using his leather gauntlets as spades. It took
nearly half an hour to get Hollister out. He came up smiling.
“Cold berth down there,” he said by way of comment.
“You’re not really hurt, are you?” Betty said.
“Nothing to speak of. The edge of the sled scraped the skin from my
arm. Feels a bit fiery. How about the horses?”
Lon and his employer were already at work on them. Three of the
animals had pawed and kicked till they were back on their feet. The
men helped them back to the road, after unhitching them from the
sled. It was necessary to dig the fourth horse out of a deep drift into
which it had been flung.
Betty sat beside Hollister in the wagon bed on a pile of salvaged
blankets. She felt strangely weak and shaken. It was as though the
strength had been drained out of her by the emotional stress through
which she had passed. To be flung starkly against the chance, the
probability, that Tug was dead had been a terrible experience. The
shock had struck her instantly, vitally, with paralyzing force. She
leaned against the side of the bed laxly, trying to escape from the
harrowing intensity of her feeling. That she could suffer so acutely,
so profoundly, was a revelation to her.
What was the meaning of it? Why had the strength and energy
ebbed from her body as they do from one desperately wounded? It
was disturbing and perplexing. She had not been that way when her
father was shot. Could she find the answer to the last question in the
way she had put it? Desperately wounded! Had she, until hope
flowed back into her heart, been that?
“You’re ill,” she heard a concerned, far-away voice say. “It’s been too
much for you.”
She fought against a wave of faintness before she answered. “I
suppose so. It’s—silly of me. But I’m all right now.”
“It’s no joke to be buried in an avalanche. Hello! Look there!”
Her gaze followed the direction in which he was pointing, the edge of
the bluff above. Two men were looking down from the place where
the slide had started. It was too far to recognize them, but one
carried a rifle. They stood there for a minute or two before they
withdrew.
“Do you think—that they—?”
His grave eyes met hers. “I think they attempted murder, and, thank
God! failed.”
“Don’t say anything to Dad—not now,” she cautioned.
He nodded assent. “No.”
Reed had looked at his watch just before the avalanche had come
down on them. The time was then ten o’clock. It was past two before
the outfit was patched up sufficiently to travel again.
Not till they were safely out of the hills and gliding into Paradise
Valley did the cowman ask a question that had been in his mind for
some time.
“Why do you reckon that slide came down at the very moment we
were in the ravine?”
“I’ve been wonderin’ about that my own se’f. O’ course, it might just
a-happened thataway.” This from Forbes.
“It might, but it didn’t.”
“Meanin’?”
“There was an explosion just before the slide started. Some one
dynamited the comb to send it off the bluff.”
“Are you guessin’, Clint? Or do you know it for a fact?”
“I’m guessing, but I pretty near know it.”
Betty spoke up, quietly, unexpectedly. “So do Mr. Hollister and I.”
The two ranchmen pivoted simultaneously toward her. They waited,
only their eyes asking the girl what she meant.
“While you were digging, Mr. Hollister saw two men up there. He
pointed them out to me.”
“And why didn’t you show ’em to me?” demanded her father.
“What would you have done if I had?” she countered.
“Done! Gone up an’ found out who they were, though I could give a
good guess right now.”
“And do you think they would have let you come near? We could see
that one of them had a rifle. Maybe both had. They didn’t stay there
long, but I was afraid every second that you’d look up and see them.”
The foreman grunted appreciation of her sagacity. “Some head she’s
got, Clint. You’d sure have started after them birds, me like as not
trailin’ after you. An’ you’d sure never have got to ’em.”
The cowman made no comment on that. “He timed it mighty close.
Saw us coming, of course, an’ figured how long it would take us to
reach where we did. Good guessing. An old fox, I’ll say.”
“Same here.”
“He didn’t miss smashing us twenty seconds,” Hollister said. “As it
was, that’s no kind of snowstorm to be out in without an umbrella
and overshoes.”
Betty looked at him and smiled faintly. It was all very well to joke
about it now, but they had missed being killed by a hair’s breadth. It
made her sick to think of that cackling little demon up there on the
bluff plotting wholesale murder and almost succeeding in his plan.
She lived over again with a bleak sinking of the heart that five
minutes when she had not known whether Tug Hollister was dead or
alive.
If he had been killed! She knew herself now. Justin’s instinct of
selfishness had been right, after all. His niggardliness resolved itself
into self-protection. He had been fighting for his own. Even his
jealousy stood justified. She had talked largely of friendship, had
deceived herself into thinking that it was expression of herself she
craved. That was true in a sense, but the more immediate blinding
truth was that she loved Hollister. It had struck her like a bolt of
lightning.
She felt as helpless as a drowning man who has ceased struggling.
CHAPTER XXXII
WITHOUT RHYME OR REASON

It was an upsetting thing, this that had happened to Betty, as


decided and far less explainable than a chemical reaction. It seemed
to her as though life had suddenly begun to move at tremendous
speed, without any warning to her whatever that Fate intended to
step on the accelerator. She was caught in the current of a stream of
emotion sweeping down in flood. Though it gave her a great thrill,
none the less it was devastating.
She wanted to escape, to be by herself behind a locked door, where
she could sit down, find herself again, and take stock of the situation.
To sit beside this stranger who had almost in the twinkling of an eye
become of amazing import to her, to feel unavoidable contact of
knee and elbow and shoulder, magnetic currents of attraction
flowing, was almost more than she could bear.
Betty talked, a little, because silence became too significant. She felt
a sense of danger, as though the personality, the individuality she
had always cherished, were being dissolved in the gulf where she
was sinking. But what she said, what Hollister replied, she could
never afterward remember.
Ruth ran to meet them with excited little screams of greeting. “Hoo-
hoo, Daddy! Hoo-hoo, Betty! Oh, goody, goody!”
Her sister was out of the sled and had the child in her arms almost
before the horses had stopped. “You darling darling!” she cried.
Buxom Bridget came to the door, all smiles of welcome. “And is it
your own self at last, Betty mavourneen? It’s glad we are to see you
this day.”
Betty hugged her and murmured a request. “Better fix up the south
bedroom for Mr. Hollister. He ought to rest at once. I’m kinda tired.”
“Sure, an’ I’ll look after him. Don’t you worry your head about that.
The room’s all ready.”
The girl’s desire to question herself had to be postponed. She had
reckoned without Ruth, who clung to her side until the child’s
bedtime. Pleading fatigue, Betty retired immediately after her sister.
She slipped into a négligée, let her dark hair down so that it fell a
rippling cascade over her shoulders, and looked into the glass of her
dressing-table that reflected a serious, lovely face of troubled youth.
A queer fancy moved in her that this girl who returned her gaze was
a stranger whom she was meeting for the first time.
Did love play such tricks as this? Did it steal away self-confidence
and leave one shy and gauche? She saw a pulse fluttering in the
brown slender throat. That was odd too. Her nerves usually were
steel-strong.
She combed her hair, braided it, and put on a crêpe-de-chine
nightgown. After the light was out and she was between the sheets,
her thoughts settled to more orderly sequence. She could always
think better in the dark, and just now she did not want to be
distracted by any physical evidences of the disorder into which she
had been flung.
How could she ever have thought of marrying Justin? She had spent
a good deal of time trying to decide calmly, without any agitation of
the blood, whether she was in love with him. It was no longer
necessary for her to puzzle over how a girl would know whether she
cared for a man. She knew. It was something in nature, altogether
outside of one’s self, that took hold of one without rhyme or reason
and played havoc with dispassionate tranquillity; a devouring flame
clean and pure, containing within itself all the potentialities of tragedy
—of life, of death, of laughter, love and tears.
And then, as is the way of healthy youth, in the midst of her
puzzlement she was asleep—and with no lapse of time, as though a
curtain had rolled up, she was opening her eyes to a new day.
If Tug had let himself count on long full hours with Betty in the
pleasant living-room, of books and ideas to be discussed together, of
casual words accented to meaning by tones of the voice and flashes
of the eye, he was predestined to disappointment. In the hill cabin
they had been alone together a good deal. She contrived to see that
this never occurred now. Except at table or in the evening with Ruth
and her father, he caught only glimpses of her as she moved about
her work.
Her eyes did not avoid his, but they did not meet in the frank, direct
way characteristic of her. She talked and laughed, joined in the give-
and-take of care-free conversation. To put into words the difference
was not easy. What he missed was the note of deep understanding
that had been between them, born less of a common point of view
than of a sympathy of feeling. Betty had definitely withdrawn into
herself.
Had he offended her? He could not think how, but he set himself to
find out. It took some contriving, for when one will and one will not a
private meeting is not easily arranged.
He was in the big family room, lying on a lounge in the sunshine of
the south window. Ruth had finished her lessons and was on the
floor busy with a pair of scissors and a page of magazine cutouts.
She babbled on, half to herself and half to him. They had become
great friends, and for the time she was his inseparable, perhaps
because he was the only one of the household not too busy to give
her all the attention she craved. Her talk, frank with the egotism of
childhood, was wholly of herself.
“I been awful bad to-day,” she confided cheerfully, almost proudly.
“Gettin’ in Bridget’s flour bin ’n’ ev’ryfing to make a cake ’n’ spillin’ a
crock o’ milk on the floor.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Oh, I been the baddest,” she reflected aloud enjoyably. Then,
unhampered by any theory of self-determination, she placed the
blame placidly where it belonged, “When I said my prayers last night
I asked God to make me good, but he didn’t do it.”
Tug did not probe deeper into this interesting point of view, for Betty
came into the room with an armful of books and magazines.
“Thought from what you said at breakfast you’re hungry for reading,”
she said. “So I brought you some. If you’re like I am, you’ll want to
browse around a bit before you settle down. This Tarkington story is
good—if you haven’t read it. But maybe you like Conrad better.”
Through the open door came a delicious odor of fresh baking from
the kitchen. Out of the corner of his eye Tug took in Ruth. He sniffed
the spicy aroma and audibly sounded his lips.
“My! Cookies!” he murmured.
Instantly Ruth responded to the suggestion. She scrambled to her
feet and trotted out, intent on achieving cookies at once. Betty turned
to follow, but her guest stopped her with a question.
“What’s the Tarkington story about?”
“About a girl who’s hanging on to the outskirts of society and making
all kinds of pretenses—a pushing kind of a girl, who has to fib and
scheme to get along. But he makes her so human you like her and
feel sorry for her.”
“Sounds interesting.” He fired his broadside while he still held her
eyes. “Miss Reed, why am I being punished?”
Into her cheeks the color flowed. “Punished?” she murmured, taken
aback.
Betty had stopped by the table and half turned. He reached for the
umbrella he used as a support and hobbled toward her. “Yes. What
have I done?”
A turmoil of the blood began to boil in her. “The doctor said you were
to keep off your feet,” she evaded.
“Yes, and he said you were to entertain me—keep me interested.”
“That was when you were too sick to read. And I’m busy now. Lots of
work piled up while I was away.”
“Then you’re not offended about anything.”
She had picked up a book from the table and was reading the title.
Her eyes did not lift to his. “What could I be—offended about?” In
spite of the best she could do, her voice was a little tremulous.
“I don’t know. Are you?”
“No.” The lashes fluttered up. She had to meet his gaze or confess
that she was afraid to.
“You’re different. You—”
He stopped, struck dumb. A wild hope flamed up in him. What was it
the shy, soft eyes were telling him against her will? He stood on the
threshold of knowledge, his heart drumming fast.
During that moment of realization they were lost in each other’s
eyes. The soul of each was drawn as by a magnet out of the body to
that region beyond space where the spirits of lovers are fused.
Betty’s hands lifted ever so slightly in a gesture of ultimate and
passionate surrender to this force which had taken hold of her so
completely.
Then, with no conscious volition on the part of either, they were in
each other’s arms, swept there by a rising tide of emotion that
drowned thought.
CHAPTER XXXIII
THE BLUEBIRD ALIGHTS AND THEN TAKES
WING

Tug pushed Betty from him. Out of a full tide of feeling he came to
consciousness of what he was doing.
“I can’t. I can’t,” he whispered hoarsely.
She understood only that something in his mind threatened their
happiness. Her eyes clung to his. She waited, breathless, still under
the spell of their great moment.
“Can’t what?” at last she murmured.
“Can’t ... marry you.” He struggled for expression, visibly in anguish.
“I’m ... outside the pale.”
“How—outside the pale?”
“I’ve made it impossible. We met too late.”
“You’re not—married?”
“No. I’m ... I’m—” He stuck, and started again. “You know. My vice.”
It took her a moment to remember what it was. To her it was
something done with ages ago in that pre-millennial past before they
had found each other. She found no conceivable relationship
between it and this miracle which had befallen them.
“But—I don’t understand. You’re not—”
She flashed a star-eyed, wordless question at him, born of a swift
and panicky fear.
“No. I haven’t touched it—not since I went into the hills. But—I
might.”
“What nonsense! Of course, you won’t.”
“How do I know?”
“It’s too silly to think about. Why should you?”
“It’s not a matter of reason. I tried to stop before, and I couldn’t.”
“But you stopped this time.”
“Yes. I haven’t had the headaches. Suppose they began again.
They’re fierce—as though the top of my head were being sawed off.
If they came back—what then? How do I know I wouldn’t turn to the
drug for relief?”
“They won’t come back.”
“But if they did?”
She gave him both her hands. There were gifts in her eyes—of faith,
of splendid scorn for the vice he had trodden underfoot, of faith
profound and sure. “If they do come back, dear, we’ll fight them
together.”
He was touched, deeply. There was a smirr of mist obscuring his
vision. Her high sweet courage took him by the throat. “That’s like
you. I couldn’t pay you a better compliment if I hunted the world over
for one. But I can’t let you in for the possibility of such a thing. I’d be
a rotten cad to do it. I’ve got to buck it through alone. That’s the price
I’ve got to pay.”
“The price for what?”
“For having been a weakling: for having yielded to it before.”
“You never were a weakling,” she protested indignantly. “You weren’t
responsible. It was nothing but an effect of your wounds. The doctors
gave it to you because you had to have it. You used it to dull the
horrible pain. When the pain stopped and you were cured, you quit
taking it. That’s all there is to it.”
He smiled ruefully, though he was deadly in earnest. “You make it
sound as simple as a proposition in geometry. But I’m afraid, dear, it
isn’t as easily disposed of as that. I started to take it for my
headaches, but I kept on taking it regularly whether I needed it for
the pain or not. I was a drug victim. No use dodging that. It’s the
truth.”
“Well, say you were. You’re not now. You never will be again. I’d—I’d
stake my head on it.”
“Yes. Because you are you. And your faith would help me—
tremendously. But I know the horrible power of the thing. It’s an
obsession. When the craving was on me, it was there every second.
I found myself looking for all sorts of plausible excuses to give way.”
“It hadn’t any real power. You’ve proved that by breaking away from
it.”
“I’ve regained my health from the hills and from my work. That
stopped the trouble with my head. But how do I know it has stopped
permanently?”
Wise beyond her years, she smiled tenderly. “You mentioned faith a
minute ago. It’s true. We have to live by that. A thousand times a day
we depend on it. We rely on the foundations of the house not to
crumble and let it bury us. I never ride a horse without assuming that
it won’t kick me. We have to have the courage of our hopes, don’t
we?”
“For ourselves, yes. But we ought not to invite those we love into the
house unless we’re sure of the foundations.”
“I’m sure enough. And, anyhow, that’s a poor cold sort of philosophy.
I want to be where you are.” The slim, straight figure, the dusky,
gallant little head, the eyes so luminous and quick, reproached with
their eagerness his prudent caution. She offered him the greatest gift
in the world, and he hung back with ifs and buts.
There was in him something that held at bay what he wanted more
than anything else on earth. He could not brush aside hesitations
with her magnificent scorn. He had lost the right to do it. His
generosity would be at her expense.
“If you knew, dear, how much I want you. If you knew! But I’ve got to
think of you, to protect you from myself. Oh, Betty, why didn’t I meet
you two years ago?” His voice was poignant as a wail.
“You didn’t. But you’ve met me now. If you really want me—well,
here I am.”
“Yes, you’re there, the sweetest girl ever God made—and I’m here a
thousand miles away from you.”
“Not unless you think so, Tug,” she answered softly, her dusky eyes
inviting him. “You’ve made me love you. What are you going to do
with me?”
“I’m going to see you get the squarest deal I can give you, no matter
what it costs.”
“Costs you or me?”
The sound in his throat was almost a groan. “Dear heart, I’m torn in
two,” he told her.
“Don’t be, Tug.” Her tender eyes and wistfully smiling lips were very
close to him. “It’s all right. I’m just as sure.”
He shook his head. “I’ve got to play the game,” he said miserably.
Betty talked, pleaded, argued with him, but his point of view
remained unchanged.
A reaction of irritation swept her. It was in part offended modesty.
She had offered herself, repeatedly, and he would not have her. How
did she know that he was giving the true reason? It might be only a
tactful way of getting rid of her.
“Play it then,” she replied curtly, and she walked out of the room
without another look at him.
He was astounded, shocked. He had been to blame, of course, in
ever letting his love leap out and surprise them. Probably he had not
made clear to her the obligation that bound him not to let her tie up
her life with his. He must see her at once and make her understand.
But this he could not do. A note dispatched by Ruth brought back the
verbal message that she was busy. At supper Betty did not appear.
The specious plea was that she had a headache. Nor was she at
breakfast. From Bridget he gathered that she had gone to the
Quarter Circle D E and would stay there several days.
“Lookin’ after some fencing,” the housekeeper explained. “That gir-
rl’s a wonder if iver there was one.”
Tug agreed to that, but it was in his mind that the fencing would have
had to wait if affairs had not come to a crisis between him and Betty.
He had no intention of keeping her from her home. Over the
telephone he made arrangements to stay at the Wild Horse House.
Clint, perplexed and a little disturbed in mind, drove him to town.
Most of the way they covered in silence. Just before they reached
the village, Reed came to what was in his mind.
“You an’ Betty had any trouble, Hollister?”
The younger man considered this a moment. “No trouble; that is, not
exactly trouble.”
“She’s high-headed,” her father said, rather by way of explanation
than apology. “But she’s the salt of the earth. Don’t you make any
mistake about that.”
“I wouldn’t be likely to,” his guest said quietly. “She’s the finest girl I
ever met.”
The cowman looked quickly at him. “Did she go to the Quarter Circle
D E because of anything that took place between you an’ her?”
“I think so.” He added a moment later an explanation: “I let her see
how much I thought of her. It slipped out. I hadn’t meant to.”
Reed was still puzzled. He knew his daughter liked the young fellow
by his side. “Did that make her mad?” he asked.
“No. I found out she cared for me.”
“You mean—?”
“Yes.” The face of the engineer flushed. “It was a complete surprise
to me. I had thought my feelings wouldn’t matter because she would
never find out about them. When she did—and told me that she—
cared for me, I had to tell her where I stand.”
“Just where do you stand?”
“I can’t marry. You must know why.”
Clint flicked the whip and the young team speeded. When he had
steadied them to a more sedate pace, he spoke. “I reckon I do. But
—you’ve given it up, haven’t you?”
“Yes.” He qualified the affirmative. “I’m not the first man who thought
he’d given it up and hadn’t.”
“Got doubts about it, have you?”
“No. I think I’m done with the cursed stuff. But how do I know?” Tug
went into details as to the nature of the disease. He finished with a
sentence that was almost a cry. “I’d rather see her dead than married
to a victim of that habit.”
“What did Betty say to that?”
“What I’d expect her to say. She wouldn’t believe there was any
danger. Wouldn’t have it for a minute. You know how generous she
is. Then, when I insisted on it, she seemed to think it was an excuse
and walked out of the room. I haven’t seen her since. She wouldn’t
let me have a chance.”
“I don’t see as there’s much you could say—unless you’re aimin’ to
renig.” Reed’s voice took on a trace of resentment. “Seems to me,
young fellow, it was up to you not to let things get as far as they did
between you an’ Betty. That wasn’t hardly a square deal for her. You
get her to tell you how she feels to you, an’ then you turn her down. I
don’t like that a-tall.”
Tug did not try to defend himself. “That’s one way of looking at it. I
ought never to have come to the house,” he said with humility.
“I wish you hadn’t. But wishing don’t get us anywhere. Point is, what
are we going to do about it?”
“I don’t see anything to do. I’d take the first train out if it would help
any,” Hollister replied despondently.
“Don’t you go. I’ll have a talk with her an’ see how she feels first.”
Hollister promised not to leave until he had heard from Reed.
CHAPTER XXXIV
BORN THAT WAY

It was impossible for Betty to escape the emotions that flooded her,
but she was the last girl to sit down and accept defeat with folded
hands. There was in her a certain vigor of the spirit that craved
expression, that held her head up in the face of disaster.
At the Quarter Circle D E she was so briskly businesslike that none
of the men would have guessed that she was passing through a
crisis. Except for moments of abstraction, she gave no evidence of
the waves of emotion that inundated her while she was giving orders
about the fencing of the northwest forty or the moving of the pigpens.
When she was alone, it was worse. Her longing for Hollister became
acute. If she could see him, talk with him, his point of view would be
changed. New arguments marshaled themselves in her mind. It was
ridiculous to suppose that a man’s past—one not of his own
choosing, but forced on him—could determine his future so greatly
as to make happiness impossible. She would not believe it. Every
instinct of her virile young personality rebelled against the
acceptance of such a law.
Tug’s persistence in renouncing joy had wounded her vanity. But at
bottom she did not doubt him. He had stood out because he thought
it right, not because he did not love her. In spite of her distress of
mind, she was not quite unhappy. A warm hope nestled in her
bosom. She loved and was loved. The barrier between them would
be torn down. Again they would be fused into that oneness which for
a blessed ten minutes had absorbed them.
Her father drove over in the rattletrap car. Ostensibly he had come to
discuss with her plans for fertilization and crops of the Quarter Circle
D E for the coming season.
“I took Hollister to town this morning. He wouldn’t stay any longer,”
Reed presently mentioned, as though casually.
“Oh! Why wouldn’t he stay?” Betty was rather proud of the
indifference she contrived to convey in her voice.
“Said he didn’t want to keep you away from home.”
“Was he keeping me away?” she asked.
“Seemed to think so. Wasn’t he?”
“I see you know all about it, Dad. What did he tell you?”
“I asked him point-blank what the trouble was between you and him.
He told me.”
A faint crimson streamed into her cheeks. “What did he say it was?”
“He’s afraid. Not for himself, but for you.”
“I think that’s awf’ly silly of him.”
“I’m not so sure about that, Bettykins. If there’s any doubt whatever,
he’d better wait till he’s certain.” He let his arm fall across her
shoulders with a gentleness she knew to be a caress. “Have you
found the man you want, dear? Sure about it?”
She smiled ruefully. “I’m sure enough, Dad. He’s the one that seems
in doubt.” To this she added a reply to a sentence earlier in his
period. “He didn’t say anything to me about waiting. His ‘No, thank
you,’ was quite definite, I thought.”
Clint’s wrath began to simmer. “If he’s got a notion that he can take
or leave you as he pleases—”
Betty put a hand on his arm. “Please, Dad. I don’t mean what I said.
It’s not fair to him. He doesn’t think that at all.”
“There’s no man in the Rockies good enough for you—”
“Are you taking in enough territory?” she teased, her face bubbling to
mirth. “I don’t even know whether you’re including Denver. Justin
came from there, and he’s too good for me.”
“Who says he’s too good?”
“Too perfect, then. I couldn’t live up to him. Never in the world.” Her
eyes fixed on something in the distance. She watched for a moment
or two. “Talking about angels, Dad. There’s the flutter of his engine
fan.”
Reed turned.
Merrick was killing the engine of his runabout. He came across to
them, ruddy, strong, well-kept. Every stride expressed the self-reliant
and complacent quality of his force.
The girl’s heart beat faster. She had not seen him since that
moment, more than two weeks ago, when they had parted in anger.
Her resentment against him had long since died. He had not been to
blame because they were incompatible in point of view and
temperament. It was characteristic of her that she had written to ask
him to forgive her if she had in any way done him a wrong. If she
could, she wanted to keep him for a friend.
He shook hands with them. Reed asked about the work.
“We’ve finished the tunnel and are laying the line of the main canal
between it and the draw where it runs into Elk Creek Cañon. Soon
as the ground is thawed out, I’ll have dirt flying on it,” the engineer
said.
“Lots of water in the dam?” asked the cowman.
“Full up. The mild weather this last week has raised it a lot. There’s a
great deal of snow in the hills. We’ll have no difficulty about a
sufficient supply.”
“Good. You’ve got old Jake Prowers beat.”
“Justin has done a big thing for this part of the country. That’s more
important than beating Mr. Prowers,” Betty said.
“Yes,” agreed Merrick impersonally. “By the way, the old fellow is still
nursing his fancied injuries. He was hanging around the dam
yesterday. I warned him off.”
“Say anything?” asked Clint.

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