The other advanced a step, looking a trifle pale and disheveled. He placed himself square in front of Lodusky.
“Dusk Dunbar,” he said, “you're the one to settle it. Which on us is a-gwine home with ye—me or him? Ye haint promised the two of us, hev ye?”
There was certainly a suddenly lit spark of exultation in the girl's coolly dropped eyes.
“Settle it betwixt ye,” she answered with her exasperating half smile again.
They had attracted attention by this time, and were becoming the centre figures of a group of lookers-on.
The first had evidently lost his temper. She was the one who should settle it, he proclaimed loudly again. She had promised one man her “comp'ny” and had come with another.
There was so much fierce anger in his face that Miss Noble drew a little nearer, and felt her own blood warmed.
“Which on us is it to be?” he cried.
There was a quick, strong movement on the part of the young man Dave, and he was whirled aside for a second time.
“It's to be me,” he was answered. “I'm the man to settle that—I don't leave it to no gal to settle.”