“I’ve been occupying the floor for some time,” he pointed out. “Suppose you confess first.”
She gave in, and told him of her father’s ambition for her to marry Hunter Mangan, and how she had revolted and planned to humiliate Mangan and her father by making up to what she considered the least important individual in the camp—the flunky. How fate had taken the situation into her own hands and caused her first to admire, then come to love the man she had mischievously chosen to bear the burden of her girlish willfulness.
Falcon the Flunky chuckled. “So your father desires a moneyed man for you, does he? Well, we’ll see what we can do for him. Disappointments should be avoided in this life, if possible, you know. He’s too old to face disappointments any longer. I imagine he’s stood his share of them. I admire your father. He’s so forceful and—and convincing. I doubt if any other man I ever met could tie me hand and foot so easily. He has a convincing way with that big gun of his. It’s folly to misinterpret him.”
“He’s an old dear,” said Manzanita. “And as for disappointment, he started out as a homesteader at Squawtooth, with almost nothing for backing. Disappointments! Goodness me! His life has been one disappointment after another up until the last ten years.”
“We’ll see if we can reward him for his patience and perseverance,” said The Falcon with a merry laugh.
“Now tell me,” she pleaded. “Don’t talk in riddles any longer. You forced a serious confession from me to-night. You’ve made me admit that I—that—that you’re everything to me. And, merciful heavens, I don’t even know your name!”
“I’ll keep you in ignorance no longer,” he promised.
But before he could continue she laid her hand on his wrist and whispered: “Listen!”
They reined in, every sense alert.
From a great distance came plainly the sounds of galloping hoofs.