“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 any one 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 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.