She beckoned him with a swift movement and gazed out over the assemblage again, and after a few moments of deliberation Hooker tied his horse and wandered into the hotel.
A tingle of excitement went over him as he tramped up to the ladies' parlor, for he had never met Gracia face to face. But he disguised his qualms by assuming a mask-like grimness of countenance and, when the glorious Gracia glided out of her room to meet him, he only blinked and stood pat.
A long experience as a poker-player was all that saved him from betrayal, for there was something in her very presence which made his heart leap and pound. But he only gazed at her somberly, without even so much as raising his hat.
Back in Texas, in his social world, it was considered almost unmanly thus to salute the ladies. So he stood there, his big sombrero pulled down over his mop of light hair, gazing at her without a blink.
Perhaps it was not altogether so friendly a scrutiny of her charming features as Gracia expected, for he remembered what she had done to his pardner; but if she sensed such a rare thing as disapproval from a young man, she was too excited to show it. Her lips trembled, and she looked back furtively, meanwhile drawing him into an alcove by the slightest twitch of his sleeve.
"Don't talk too loud," she whispered. "My mother is listening from the room—but for the love of God, tell me, where is Phil?"
"I don't know," answered Bud, trying to lower his big voice to a boudoir softness; "he joined the rurales and was ordered north—that's all I know."
"Yes, yes, to be sure; but haven't you heard from him?"
She seemed to be all impatience to snatch his news and fly with it, but Bud was in no such hurry. And so far was he from being a carpet knight that he immediately raised his voice to its normal bass. It was all right for Phil and his kind to talk by signs and whispers, but that was not his style.
"Not since he went away," he said. "He left me a little note, then, saying—"