The drooping lashes raised. The eyes were gray again. She regarded him for awhile without speaking.
“Why don’t you quarrel?” she asked finally.
The spell was broken. Her pounding heart had vent in a nervous laugh of raillery. She touched her horse with the 501riding crop in her gauntleted hand. Somehow she would not leave that dumb brute, the horse, in peace. Driscoll’s old Demijohn, however, was used to the game by now. He pointed his ears, and checkmated that last move by bringing his master once more to the lady’s side.
“You used to,” she went on, as though there had been no interruption, “nicely. You were of an interest then. In fact, I reck-on–I know no one that I had rather have quarreled with.”
But still he would not, though that “reckon” from her lips was most alluring. She stole a mischievous glance at his face, but the fixed look there made her lift her hand toward him. Perhaps, if he had seen and had spoken then–But he did see.
“Eh bien, since monsieur won’t fight, won’t, won’t,” she cried, “then it’s more fun to––”
Evidently to seek livelier company. For she wheeled the mustang, swerved from a grasp at her bridle, and went galloping back to the coach. He twisted in his saddle, pushed his sombrero higher on his head, and dubiously watched her flying from him, a lithe, trim figure in snug Hungarian jacket, the burnished tendrils fluttering on the nape of her neck, the soft white veil trailing like a fleecy cloud from her black amazona hat. He bent a perplexed gaze to the road. “It’s ’way, ’way beyond me,” he told himself. Then he grew aware of a sense of warmth on his forearm. Yes, he remembered. For an instant she had laid a hand on his sleeve, and he had thrilled to the ineffable token of nestling. He was never immune from her tantalizing contradictions. He felt this one yet.
Hoofs pounded behind, and Mr. Boone drew up alongside. “She came back, and made me get away from the coach,” he announced. “Prob’bly she wanted to cry some; she looked it.”
502Yet another of her contradictions!
“Then why in the nation,” Driscoll demanded, “do you keep hanging round that coach for? Look here Shanks, you make me plum’ weary. The idea of you falling in––”