Harry's explanation was somewhat jerky. The subject of Jones and his horses still rankled in her, and she could not speak of them naturally. Garnett looked at her gravely. She felt the color rush into her face and her eyes fell.
"You must stay and have some lunch," she said at last, trying to turn the conversation away from the painful subject. "I haven't a hot dinner, because the boys aren't going to be home, but I'd like to have you stay."
To her surprise Garnett readily accepted her invitation. While she was setting the table, she kept stealing glances at him, and tried to harmonize her memory of the very boyish person she had met on the train with this quiet young man. He was the same big, friendly fellow, with the same laughter-wrinkled eyes; but now there was something beneath his reserve that she could not quite understand. Sitting cross-legged on the grass outside the tent, he played with 'Thello, and talked casually to Harry while she moved about inside. All the restraint of the first moments had apparently passed; Garnett said nothing more about the horses until he left, an hour later.
"If that pony of mine should come in here," he said, turning in his saddle, "I'd be a lot obliged to you if you'd send me a line. Soldier's my post office. That horse of mine is about six years old, sorrel, ring-and-arrow brand. You'd notice him in a bunch of cayuses."
A sorrel! Harry's thoughts flashed to the sorrel horse which Rob had ridden away that morning. She felt a pang of vague apprehension, and wondered whether Garnett had noticed her startled look.
When Garnett had gone, she tried to reassure herself. Of course anything that Rob took an interest in was all right; but why did he keep it a secret from her? Suppose that sorrel horse should prove to have the ring-and-arrow brand? There might be many sorrels with that brand, yet her heart beat more nervously and her lips grew dry.
An idea came to her, and she ran up the glen toward the pasture where the colts were hidden. She knew that the sorrel was not there, but she wanted to see whether the colts were branded.
When she reached the upper end of the glen she crawled through the barbed wire, and was just emerging from the shelter of the trees when she saw Garnett ride along the fence and look at the bunch of colts inside.
Harry stepped back, instinctively afraid of his seeing her. Why? She demanded it of herself fiercely. Why should she feel guilty because Rob was concealing something from her? She had done nothing wrong. But Garnett suspected something; he had not believed her.
Humiliation swept over her. Even after Garnett, satisfied that his horse was not there, had ridden away, and after she had returned to the tent, her cheeks burned at the thought, "He did not believe me."