“Thank you,” she responded evenly. “If the stage is gone I will hold it to add something.” So saying, she tucked the letter inside her blouse and spoke to her pony, which turned leisurely down the road.
“I’m trying to get acquainted with your country to-day,” returned de Spain, managing with his knee to keep his own horse moving alongside Nan as she edged away.
She seemed disinclined to answer, but the silence 50 and the awkwardness of his presence drew at length a dry disclaimer: “This is not my country.”
“I understood,” exclaimed de Spain, following his doubtful advantage, “you lived out this way.”
“I live near Music Mountain,” returned Nan somewhat ungraciously, using her own skill at the same time to walk her horse away from her unwelcome companion.
“I’ve heard of Music Mountain,” continued de Spain, urging his lagging steed. “I’ve often wanted to get over there to hunt.”
Nan, without speaking, ruthlessly widened the distance between the two. De Spain unobtrusively spurred his steed to greater activity. “You must have a great deal of game around you. Do you hunt?” he asked.
He knew she was famed as a huntress, but he could make no headway whatever against her studied reserve. He watched her hands, graceful even in heavy gloves; he noticed the neck-piece of her tan blouse, and liked the brown throat and the chin set so resolutely against him. He surmised that she perhaps felt some contempt for him because she had outshot him, and he continued to ask about game, hoping for a chance in some far-off time to redeem his marksmanship before her and giving her every possible chance to 51 invite him to try the hunting around Music Mountain.
She was deaf to the broadest hints; and when at length she excused herself and turned her pony from the Sleepy Cat road into the Morgan Gap trail, de Spain had been defeated in every attempt to arouse the slightest interest in anything he had said. But, watching with regret, at the parting, the trim lines of her figure as she dashed away on the desert trail, seated as if a part of her spirited horse, he felt only a fast-rising resolution to attempt again to break through her stubborn reticence and know her better.