He looked her up and down with mocking significance, “Say, but you’ll make a great squaw for some feller. Been thinkin’ I’d make a deal with your mother to take you back to the mountings with me when I go. I’ll learn you how to tan hides, and a lot of things you don’t know.”
The girl’s lip curled.
“Yes, I’d like to tan hides for you, Pete Mullendore! When I get frost bit in August I’ll go, but not before.”
He replied easily:
“You ain’t of age yet, Katie, and you have to mind your maw. I’ve got an idee that she’ll tell you to go if I say so.”
“A whole lot my mother would mind what you say!” Yet in spite of her defiance a look of fear crossed the girl’s face.
She slipped her arm through the harness and started towards the shed, Mullendore following with his slouching walk, an unprepossessing figure in his faded overalls, black and white mackinaw coat and woolen cap.
The trapper was tall and lank, with a pair of curious, unforgettable eyes looking out from a swarthy face that told of Indian blood. They were round rather than the oblong shape to be expected in his type, and the iris a muddy blue-gray. The effect was indescribably queer, and was accentuated by the coal-black lashes and straight black brows which met above a rather thick nose. He had a low forehead, and when he grinned his teeth gleamed like ivory in his dark face. He boasted of Apache-Mexican blood “with a streak of white.”
While Kate hung the harness on its peg, Mullendore, waited for her outside. “My! My! Katie,” he leered at her as she came back, “but you’re gettin’ to be a big girl! Them legs looked like a couple of pitchfork handles when I went away, and now the shape they’ve got!”
He laughed in malicious enjoyment as he saw the color rise to the roots of her hair; and when she would have passed, reached out and grasped her arm.