"Don't do that!" he pleaded. "Don't cry. I didn't mean it. Come on and walk. Walk all you like. Walk a lot. I'll help you down."
She turned her face to him and he gasped; for in place of tears there was laughter, mocking laughter.
"You—you fraud!" he exclaimed.
"You—you bluff!" she retorted. "This was one of the things you could make me do because you were stronger, was it? Oh, Angus Mackay, what a soft heart you have in that big body!"
"It would serve you right if I made you walk!" he told her indignantly.
"Yes, wouldn't it? But you won't. I'll ride—if you'll promise to tell me if you get tired."
And so they went down the old tote road in the wan light of the fall sunset.
"It's exactly like that day so many years ago," she said.
But Angus, though he agreed with her, was privately conscious of a vast difference. On that far-away day he had considered the little, lost girl a nuisance and an imposition. Now he felt a strange, warm glow and thrill as he walked beside her, and a sense of contentment strange to him. He was conscious of this feeling. But, quite honestly, he attributed it to the fact that he had just got his first grizzly, and what was more, centered him, charging, with every shot; which, as he looked at it, ought to be a source of satisfaction to any properly constituted man, and adequately explained the sense of contentment aforesaid.