“No, I shall stay here, and while you and my friend are gone, I’ll practise shooting at a mark.” As she drew her little revolver out of her pocket, and the silver mounting caught the sunlight, she recognized herself for a very astute person. Louis, if no one else, might quite well need reminding that she was armed.
“Y’ won’t go?” the man persisted. “Well, I guess I ain’t got time fur it neither. I ought to see a man up at the store.”
In the act of going forward to meet Cheviot with this information, the unaccountable creature paused to say over his shoulder: “Yer sure to git a nugget if yer go to the gulch.”
“I’d go quick enough if I could walk.”
He faced about. “Y’ can’t walk!” It seemed somehow to make a difference, but he narrowed his little eyes.
“Why can’t yer?”
“I’ve sprained my ankle.”
“Oh! Bad?”
“I’m afraid so. I’ve been told not to put my foot to the ground—or else I’d hobble to the town and hunt up a man I’ve heard lives hereabouts.” Ah, that interested the disreputable one quite as much, apparently, as it did Miss Mar. “I wonder if you know him! A queer, hermit sort of person who discovered the—What’s the matter?”
“I knowed all along what ye’d come fur.”