Here she not only procured food and whiskey, but added a long dust-coat and hat of her father's to her burden. They would serve as a disguise for him and hide that heroic figure, which she thought everybody must now know as she did. Then she rejoined him breathlessly. But he put the food and whiskey aside.
“Listen,” he said; “I've turned the hoss into your corral. You'll find him there in the morning, and no one will know but that he got lost and joined the other hosses.”
Then she burst out. “But you—YOU—what will become of you? You'll be ketched!”
“I'll manage to get away,” he said in a low voice, “ef—ef”—
“Ef what?” she said tremblingly. “Ef you'll put the heart in me again,—as you did!” he gasped.
She tried to laugh—to move away. She could do neither. Suddenly he caught her in his arms, with a long kiss, which she returned again and again. Then they stood embraced as they had embraced two days before, but no longer the same. For the cool, lazy Salomy Jane had been transformed into another woman—a passionate, clinging savage. Perhaps something of her father's blood had surged within her at that supreme moment. The man stood erect and determined.
“Wot's your name?” she whispered quickly. It was a woman's quickest way of defining her feelings.
“Dart.”
“Yer first name?”
“Jack.”