"You don't seem to realize the position it puts me in," Hazel answered. A wave of despondency swept over her, and her eyes grew suddenly bright with the tears she strove to keep back. "If we wander around in the woods much longer, I'll simply be a sensation when I do get back to Cariboo Meadows. I won't have a shred of reputation left. It will probably result in my losing the school. You're a man, and it's different with you. You can't know what a girl has to contend with where no one knows her. I'm a stranger in this country, and what little they do know of me—"
She stopped short, on the point of saying that what Cariboo Meadows knew of her through the medium of Mr. Howard Perkins was not at all to her credit.
Roaring Bill looked up at her impassively. "I know," he said, as if he had read her thought. "Your friend Perkins talked a lot. But what's the difference? Cariboo Meadows is only a fleabite. If you're right, and you know you're right, you can look the world in the eye and tell it collectively to go to the devil. Besides, you've got a perverted idea. People aren't so ready to give you the bad eye on somebody else's say-so. It would take a lot more than a flash drummer's word to convince me that you're a naughty little girl. Pshaw—forget it!"
Hazel colored hotly at his mention of Perkins, but for the latter part of his speech she could have hugged him. Bill Wagstaff went a long way, in those brief sentences, toward demolishing her conviction that no man ever overlooked an opportunity of taking advantage of a woman. But Bill said nothing further. He stood a moment longer by her horse, resting one hand on Silk's mane, and scraping absently in the soft earth with the toe of his boot.
"Well, let's get somewhere," he said abruptly. "If you're too saddle sore to ride, walk a while. I'll go slower."
She walked, and the exercise relieved the cramping ache in her limbs. Roaring Bill's slower pace was fast enough at that. She followed till her strength began to fail. And when in spite of her determination she lagged behind, he stopped at the first water.
"We'll camp here," he said. "You're about all in, and we can't get anywhere to-night, I see plainly."
Hazel accepted this dictum as best she could. She eat down on a mossy rock while he stripped the horses of their gear and staked them out. Then Bill started a fire and fixed the roll of bedding by it for her to sit on. Dusk crept over the forest while he cooked supper, making a bannock in the frying pan to take the place of bread; and when they had finished eating and washed the few dishes, night shut down black as the pit.
They talked little. Hazel was in the grip of utter forlornness, moody, wishful to cry. Roaring Bill lumped on his side of the fire, staring thoughtfully into the blaze. After a long period of abstraction he glanced at his watch, then arose and silently arranged her bed. After that he spread his saddle blankets and lay down.
Hazel crept into the covers and quietly sobbed herself to sleep. The huge and silent land appalled her. She had been chucked neck and crop into the primitive, and she had not yet been able to react to her environment. She was neither faint-hearted nor hysterical. The grind of fending for herself in a city had taught her the necessity of self-control. But she was worn out, unstrung, and there is a limit to a woman's endurance.