He unbuckled the shoulder-strap from his alligator-skin bag and looped it through the handles of the suitcases.
"Hah! Just the thing!" he exclaimed, slinging the two suitcases over his shoulder; and then, with a long, free stride, he swung along beside her, as tireless as an Indian—and as silent.
A sudden sense of respect, almost of awe, came over Dixie Lee as she contemplated his masterful repose, but the hotel door was near and she nerved herself for the assault.
"You think you're smart, don't you?" she snapped. "Following along after me this way! Just because I happened to be a little friendly——"
"Now, really, Miss Lee," broke in Bowles with admirable calm, "I hope you will not be too hard on me. I assure you, if it had not been for your distressing situation—which no gentleman could overlook—you would never have been aware of my presence. But you have known me long enough, I am sure, to know that I would never presume to force my society upon any lady, more particularly upon one for whom——"
"Well, what are you tagging along for then?" demanded Dixie Lee wrathfully. "When I said good-by to you up at Albuquerque you had a through ticket to California. Now here you are down at Chula Vista. What are you up to—that's what I want to know!"
"To be sure!" agreed Mr. Bowles. "Under the circumstances, you have a perfect right to an explanation. I may as well confess then, Miss Lee, that your stories told on the train have fired me with a desire to see the real West, not the pseudo or imitation article, but the real thing with the hair on, as you so aptly phrased it. But here was my difficulty—I had no one to direct me. The hotel-keepers, the ticket-agents, even my Eastern friends in the West, might send me astray and I be none the wiser. I admit it was hardly a gentlemanly thing to do, but rather than lose my last chance to see the great West of which you spoke I followed after you; but without the slightest intention, I assure you, of making myself obnoxious. Is this the hotel ahead?"
"Yes," said Dixie Lee, "it is. And while I wish to congratulate you upon your explanation I want to inform you, Mr. Bowles, that right here is where we part. You're looking for the Wild West, and here she is with her hair down. If you are hunting experiences these Chula Vista boys will certainly accommodate you; but from this time on, Mr. Bowles, we are strangers. We don't know each other, do you understand? If what you say is true, you followed me simply to find the Far West. This is it. We're quits, then; and I shall have to ask you, as a gentleman, not to annoy me further. You may be all right—back in New York—but out here it's different and I don't want to have the folks joshing me about you. So I'll bid you farewell, Mr. Bowles, and thank you kindly for carrying up my baggage—but don't you dare come around the Bat Wing Ranch, or I'll tell the boys to kill you!"
She grabbed up her baggage as she spoke and hurried ahead, and when Mr. Bowles stepped into the hotel some minutes later she was as distant as an ivory goddess. Or a bronze goddess, to be exact, for the sun and wind had caressed the fair cheeks of Dixie May until they were as brown and ruddy as a berry, and even the steam heat of a New York apartment could only reduce their coloring. She seemed a goddess indeed to Bowles as she lingered beside the stove, her smooth, capable hands bared to the glow of the flames, and her body buoyant with the grace of youth; but the laughing brown eyes which had become the mirrors of his life were turned away now and all the world was changed.
The bottle-nosed proprietor came shuffling in from the bar and silently handed him a pen; then, without looking at the name that was signed, he wrote a number after it and handed his guest a key.