And then, with an impatience that caused her cheeks to glow, Barbara noted that Purgatory had slowed also, Harlan seemingly accommodating the animal’s pace to her own. It was plain to see that Harlan did not intend to assume that she had relented.
For another quarter of a mile the distance remained the same, and the silence was unbroken except by the rhythmical beating of hoofs through the rustling, matted mesquite.
Then Barbara, yielding to an impulse of righteous anger, brought on by Harlan’s obvious intention to remain at a respectful distance, deliberately brought Billy to a walk and waited until Harlan rode beside her.
“You don’t need to be a brute—even if I did tell you to go back to the ranchhouse!”
“Meanin’ what, ma’am? Why, I don’t remember to have done anything. I was doin’ a heap of thinkin’ just now—if that’s what you mean.”
“Thinking mean things of me—I suppose—for what I said to you.”
He had been thinking of her—seriously. And his thoughts were far from fickle as he watched her now, riding within a few feet of him, her profile toward him, her head having a rigid set, her chin held high, her lips tight-pressed, and her hair drooping in graceful coils over her ears, and bulging in alluring disorder at the nape of her neck.
He was thinking that he had braved, to answer a mere whim, greater dangers than he would be likely to meet in defending her from the wolf-pack which circumstances had set upon her. He was thinking that heretofore his life had been lived without regard to order or system—that he had led a will-o’-the-wisp existence, never knowing that such women as she graced the world. He was thinking of what might have happened to her had not Davey Langan been killed, and if he had not started out to avenge him.
Into his thoughts at this minute flashed a mental picture that paled his face and brought his lips into straight, hard lines—a picture of Barbara at the mercy of Deveny.
With a quick turn he brought Purgatory around in front of Billy, blocking the animal’s further progress westward. The girl started at the rapid movement, and watched him fearfully, dreading—she knew not what.