“What made you stay here instead of going on with the Kernel? There was suthin' else besides your wanting to make that Stanner take water. What is it?”
A light sense of the propinquity of beauty, of her confidence, of their isolation, of the eloquence of her dark eyes, at first tempted Hale to a reply of simple gallantry; a graver consideration of the same circumstances froze it upon his lips.
“I don't know,” he returned awkwardly.
“Well, I'll tell you,” she said. “You didn't cotton to the Kernel and Rawlins much more than you did to Stanner. They ain't your kind.”
In his embarrassment Hale blundered upon the thought he had honorably avoided.
“Suppose,” he said, with a constrained laugh, “I had stayed to see you.”
“I reckon I ain't your kind, neither,” she replied promptly. There was a momentary pause when she rose and walked to the chimney. “It's very quiet down there,” she said, stooping and listening over the roughly-boarded floor that formed the ceiling of the room below. “I wonder what's going on.”
In the belief that this was a delicate hint for his return to the party he had left, Hale rose, but the girl passed him hurriedly, and, opening the door, cast a quick glance into the stable beyond.
“Just as I reckoned—the horses are gone too. They've skedaddled,” she said blankly.
Hale did not reply. In his embarrassment a moment ago the idea of taking an equally sudden departure had flashed upon him. Should he take this as a justification of that impulse, or how? He stood irresolutely gazing at the girl, who turned and began to descend the stairs silently. He followed. When they reached the lower room they found it as they had expected—deserted.