“Taken you to the Gap and then taken him to Sleepy Cat, where he belongs.”
“But, Henry, suppose–––”
“There wouldn’t have been any ‘suppose.’”
“Suppose the others had come.”
“With one rifle, here, a man could stand off a regiment. Nan, do you know, you fit into my arm as if you were made for it?”
His courage was contagious. When he had tired her with fresh importunities he unpinned her felt hat and held it out of reach while he kissed and toyed with and disarranged her hair. In revenge, she snatched from his pocket his little black memorandum-book and some letters and read, or pretended to read them, and seizing her opportunity she broke from him and ran with the utmost fleetness up into the rocks.
In two minutes they had forgotten the episode almost as completely as if it never had been. But when they left for home, they agreed they would not meet there again. They knew that 260 Sassoon, like a jackal, would surely come back, and more than once, until he found out just what that trail or any subsequent trail leading into the beds meant. The lovers laughed the jackal’s spying to scorn and rode away, bantering, racing, and chasing each other in the saddle, as solely concerned in their happiness as if there were nothing else of moment in the whole wide world.