“Did Mary give you your dinner?” she asked.
“I struck the Maltese Cross round-up about eleven and ate with them,” he told her.
“Oh! Did you see Charlie Shaw?” she asked. “Did he say whether they picked up much of my stuff on Milk River?”
“Charlie Shaw is the name of that kid riding for you, eh? Well, I saw him, but he didn’t say much about cattle. And I didn’t ask. I had to step soft around that outfit. I don’t know any of these fellows, you see, and they all persist in taking me for Doc Martin. I suppose I’d have a deuce of a time persuading anybody around here that I wasn’t.”
“It’s funny. I keep thinking of you as Doc, myself. You’re really quite different, I think,” she replied thoughtfully. “Somehow, I can’t think of Doc as being dead. Yet he is.”
“Very much so,” Rock answered dryly. “And I’m myself, alive, and I wish to stay so. I’ve been wondering if posing as your man, Doc, is, after all, a wise thing for me to do. What do you think?”
“You don’t have to,” she said quickly. “I’m sure Elmer Duffy would be relieved to know you aren’t Doc Martin.”
“I don’t know about that,” Rock mused. “Elmer might have just as much to brood over if he knew who I really am.”
“Why so?” she asked point-blank.
Rock didn’t question the impulse to tell her. His instinct to be himself was strong. The pose he had taken with Duffy that morning had arisen from mixed motives. He wasn’t sure he wanted to carry on along those lines. And he most assuredly didn’t want Nona Parke to think him actuated by any quixotic idea of functioning as her protector after her declarations on that subject.