Up the Slide went Coaley, his head held proudly 97 erect upon his high, arched neck, his feet choosing daintily the little rough places in the rock where long experience had taught him he would not slip. Big as Tom was, Coaley carried him easily and reached the top without so much as a flutter in the flanks to show that the climb had cost him an effort.
“It’s a dang darn shame I got to straddle strange horses just because there ain’t another in the country like you, Coaley,” he muttered, leaning forward to smooth the silky hide under the crinkly mane. “It’s going to set hard, now I’m tellin’ yuh, to throw my saddle on some plain, ordinary cayuse. But it’s a bet I can’t afford to overlook; they made that plain enough.”
Coaley pricked up his ears and looked, his big, bright eyes taking in the shadow of a horse beside a clump of wild currant bushes that grew in the very base of the Devil’s Tooth. Tom grunted and rode over that way, Coaley walking slowly, his knees bending springily like a dancer feeling out his muscles.
Lance stood with his back toward them. His hat was pushed far back on his head, and he was looking at Mary Hope, who leaned against the rock and stared down into the valley below. Her hair, Tom observed, was not “slicked back” to-day. It had been curled a little, probably on rags twisted in after she had gone to bed and taken out before she arose in the morning, lest her mother discover her frivolity and lecture her long,––and, worse 98 still, make her wet a comb and take all of the curl out. A loose strand blew across her tanned cheek, so that she reached up absently and tucked it behind her ear, where it would not stay for longer than a minute.
“I am sure I didna know you would be here,” she said, without taking her eyes off the valley. “It is a view I like better than most, and I have a right to ride where I please. And I have no wish to ride out of my way to be friends with any one that tried to make my father out a liar and an unjust man. He may be hard, but he is honest. And that is more than some––”
“More than some can say––us Lorrigans, for instance!”
“I didna say that, but if the coat fits, you can put it on.”
Mary Hope bit her lip and lashed a weed with her quirt. “All of this is none of my doing,” she added, with a dullness in her voice that may have meant either regret or resentment. “You hate my father, and you are mad because I canna side with you and hate him too. I am sorry the trouble came up, but I canna see how you expect me to go on coming to see your mither when you know my father would never permit it.”
“You say that like you were speaking a piece. How long did you lay awake last night, making it up? You can’t make me swallow that, anyway. Your father never permitted you to come in the 99 first place, and you know it. You made believe that old skate ran away with you down the trail, and that you couldn’t stop him. You’ve been coming over to our place ever since, and you never asked old Scotty whether he would permit it or not. I’m not saying anything about myself, but it hurts Belle to have you throw her down right now. Under the circumstances it makes her feel as if you thought we were thieves and stole your dad’s yearling.”
“I’m not saying anything like that.”