"Then we'd better be riding," she said.
He swung Poche to the side of White Ann, and they moved off along the road, knee and knee.
"You're not offended?" he asked.
She threw back her head and laughed till Oliver thought of meadow larks, and robins calling before a shower.
"Offended! You must think me some sort of freak. Who ever heard of a woman being offended when a man admires her? I like it immensely, Mr. Oliver Drew. And if you can beat that for square shooting, there's no truth in me. But if you'll analyse my 'difference' you'll find it's only because I'm big and strong and healthy, and try always to shoot straight from the shoulder and look folks straight in the eye. That's all. Let's let 'em out!"
They broke into a smart gallop, and continued it up and down pine-toothed hills till they clattered into Halfmoon Flat.
Curious eyes met them, old men stopped in their tracks and leaned on their canes to watch, and folks came to windows and doors as they loped through the village.
"'Whispering tongues can poison truth,'" Jessamy quoted as they turned a corner and cantered up a hill toward a grove of pines on the outskirts of the town. "It seems odd that Adam Selden has not mentioned you to me. Surely some one has seen us together who would tell some one else who would tell Old Man Selden all about it. But not a cheep from him as yet."
"Have you any bosom friends in the Clinker Creek district?" he asked, not altogether irrelevantly.
"No, none at all. But I'm friends with everybody, though I have nothing in common with any one. I don't consider myself superior to the natives here about, but, just the same, they don't interest me. I'm speaking of the women. I like most of the men. I guess I'm what they call a man's woman. I can't sit and talk about clothes and dances, and gossip, and what one did on one's vacation last summer. It all bores me stiff, so I don't pretend it doesn't. Men, now—they can talk about horses and saddles and cows and cutting wood and prizefights and poker games and election—"