Lance turned slowly and met Tom’s eyes without flinching. “Hello,” he said, on guard against the two of them, wondering what had brought his dad to this particular point at this particular time.
“Hello. How d’yuh do, Miss Douglas? Lance, dinner’s getting cold waiting for you.” Tom lifted his hat to Mary Hope, turned, and rode back whence he had come, never glancing over his shoulder but nevertheless keenly alert for the sound of voices.
He was not quite through the Slide when he heard the hoof beats of Lance’s horse come clicking down over the rocks. Tom smiled to himself as he rode on, never looking back.
CHAPTER NINE
A LITTLE SCOTCH
In the Black Rim country March is a month of raw winds and cold rains, with sleet and snow and storm clouds tumbling high in the West and spreading to the East, where they hang lowering at the earth and then return to empty their burden of moisture upon the shrinking live things below.
In the thinly settled places March is also the time when children go shivering to school, harried by weather that has lost a little of its deadliness. In January and February their lives would not be safe from sudden blizzards, but by the middle of March they may venture forth upon the quest of learning.