“She’s a knowin’ girl,” mused the rider, strangely pleased that she should like the world he lived in. For it was his world; he had been born here.
“Don’t you think so, Willard?” added the girl.
The rider strained his ears for the answer. It came, grumblingly:
“I suppose it’s well enough—for the clodhoppers that live here.”
The girl laughed tolerantly; the rider on the mesa smiled. “I reckon I ain’t goin’ to like Willard a heap, Patches,” he said to the pony; “he’s runnin’ down our country.” He considered the girl and the driver gravely, and again spoke to the pony. “Do you reckon he’s her brother, Patches? I expect it ain’t possible—they’re so different.”
“Do you think it is quite safe?” The girl’s voice reached him again; she was looking at the water of the crossing.
“Vickers said it was,” the driver replied. “He ought to know.” His tone was irritable.
“He’s her brother, I reckon,” reflected the man on the mesa; “no lover would talk that way to his girl.” There was relief in his voice, for he had been hoping that the man was a brother.
“Vickers said to swing sharply to the left after passing the middle,” declared the driver sonorously, “but I don’t see any wagon tracks—that miserable rain last night must have obliterated them.”
“I reckon the rain has obliterated them,” grinned the rider, laboring with the word, “if that means wipin’ them out. Leastways, they ain’t there any more.”