She had giggled to herself, then. For Taylor did make a ridiculous figure. But later—when he had reentered the car and she had looked fairly, though swiftly, at him as he advanced down the aisle—she had seen something about him that had impressed her. And that was what she was thinking about now. It was his face, she believed. It was red with self-consciousness and embarrassment, but she had seen and noted the strength of it—the lean, muscular jaw, the square, projecting chin, the firm, well-controlled mouth; the steady, steel-blue eyes, the broad forehead. It had seemed to her that he was humorously aware of the clothes, but that he was grimly determined to brazen the thing out.
Her mental picture now gave her the entire view of Taylor as he had come toward her. And she could see him in a different environment, in cowboy regalia, on a horse, perfectly at ease. He made a heroic figure. So real was the picture that she caught herself saying: “Clothes do make the man!” And then she smiled at her enthusiasm and looked out of the window.
Taylor had been thinking of her with the natural curiosity of the man who knows he has no chance and is not looking for one. But she had impressed him as resembling someone with whom he had been well acquainted. For an hour he puzzled his brain in an endeavor to associate hers with some face of his recollection, but elusive memory resisted his demands on it with the result that he gave it up and leaned back as restfully as he could with the consciousness of the physical torture he was undergoing.
And then he heard the younger of the two men in front of him speak to the other:
“We’ll make things hum in Dawes, once we get hold of the reins.”
“But there will be obstacles, Carrington.”
“Sure! Obstacles! Of course. That will make the thing all the more enjoyable.”
There was a ring in Carrington’s voice that struck a chord of sudden antagonism in Taylor, a note of cunning that acted upon Taylor instantly, as though the man had twanged discord somewhere in his nature.
Dawes was Taylor’s home; he had extensive and varied interests there; he had been largely responsible for Dawes’s growth and development; he had fought for the town and the interests of the town’s citizens against the aggressions of the railroad company and a grasping land company that had succeeded in clouding the titles to every foot of land owned by Dawes’s citizens—his own included.
And he had heard rumors of outside interests that were trying to gain a foothold in Dawes. He had paid little attention to these rumors, for he knew that capital was always trying to drive wedges that would admit it to the golden opportunities afforded by new towns, and he had ascribed the rumors to idle gossip, being aware that such things are talked of by irresponsibles.