“By heavens, Bennett!” said Elliott, “if you ever try to lay a hand on that girl I’ll shoot you. Yes, I will. So there’s your plan of robbing her, and you can put that in your pipe and smoke it. That map’s her own, and I’m here to see that she does as she likes with it.”
“All right; have it your own way,” said Bennett, easily. “I don’t care a twopenny hang if she does sail with us. She seems to be a sensible sort of girl who wouldn’t bother. It was you who kicked about it.”
“I know it was, and you’ll see that I’ll convince her yet,” replied Elliott, gloomily. After a long pause, “What do you think of her?” he demanded, almost uncontrollably.
“Oh, I don’t know,” responded Bennett, between puffs. “Regular Western type, isn’t she? Sensible, nice girl, I guess. I didn’t see much in her.”
Elliott stared in amazement at such lack of penetration, threw down his cigar, and went back to the car where Margaret was settled with a heap of magazines, which she was not reading. Bennett meanwhile smiled thoughtfully at the approaching foot-hills with the air of a man for whom life has no more surprises.
There was plenty of time now to argue the question of Margaret’s accompanying the expedition, and Elliott argued it. The girl did little more than listen, sometimes smiling at the floods of polemic that were poured upon her all the way across the foot-hills, through the gorges and tunnels and trestles of the mountains, and down the slope to the desert. She would listen, but she would not discuss. She would talk of any other subject but that one. It seemed to Elliott’s watchful eye, however, that she was becoming a little more cheerful, that she was beginning to recuperate a little from the terrible strain of her experiences, and he said, mentally, that it was perhaps a good thing, after all, that she should go as far as New York.
Bennett absolutely refused to assist him, and remained for the most part in the smoking-car while the train skated down the eastern slope and roared out upon the great desert. At Ogden Elliott noted with satisfaction that they were maintaining schedule time. At Denver they were only an hour late. The country was becoming level, so that there were no topographical obstacles to speed.
“This is my country!” exclaimed Margaret. She was watching the gray-green rolling plain slowly revolve upon the middle distance. A couple of horsemen in wide hats and chaparejos were loping across it half a mile away. “How I should like to get off, get a horse, and just tear across those plains!”
“Do it, for goodness’ sake,” said Elliott. “We’ll be in Kansas City to-morrow, and you can wait there or in Lincoln till we come back with your share of the plunder.”
“No, I’ve something else to think of. Are we going to catch the steamer, do you think?”