"Good old Abbie! I wonder who she loved enough to learn all that? And so you've been taking lessons, too!"
"I thought we had done with that," she said almost pleadingly. "You make it very hard for me!"
Instantly he was all contrition. "Forgive me! I shall not offend again." She took his extended hand frankly and for a time they rode in silence. The narrow cañon trail necessitated their riding very closely together and occasionally his leathern chaps brushed against her. Once, as they rounded an abrupt turn, the heavy revolver at his hip was jammed painfully against her gauntlet; she merely shut her teeth and smiled.
They were returning from Tin Cup, whither they had gone in the morning in company with Robert and his mother, who were leaving for the East. The morning after his arrival at the ranch she had bravely told her brother the whole circumstances of the preceding week, magnanimously taking upon herself all the blame—in which truth compels us to say her brother entirely agreed—and thereafter had ridden out to the camp of the ditch repairers and patched up a truce with Douglass.
"I am only a tenderfoot," she had wisely begun, "and always have had an unhappy faculty of doing the wrong thing unintentionally. You are a big, strong, generous man, and you will hold no malice against a foolish girl—!"
He capitulated instantly; but he was over-voluble in his reassurances and somehow she divined that her apology had missed fire so far as it affected his determination to leave when he had recouped her brother for the losses he had unwittingly brought about. She was not for a moment deceived by his studiously polite words but was too politic to betray it. He had affected not to see the hand she had timidly extended in amity and for that he would pay, later! There was much of old Bob Carter's inflexible determination in this frail-looking daughter of his.
To her mother she had, curiously enough, said nothing about it. She had even been unwise enough to impose secrecy upon her brother and Abigail as to the cause of the conflagration and Red's mishap, forgetting that Mrs. Carter was range bred and born, and that Nellie Vaughan was an incorrigible gossip! It would not have added to her equanimity to have known that inside of twenty-four hours her astute mother was in possession of all the facts and considerably perturbed thereover. She would, however, have appreciated the relief in her mother's eyes on her first encounter with Douglass.
"Clean, manly and good to look at," had been her shrewd verdict. "Thoroughbred stock, too. A good friend and a bad enemy! A good cowman and a valuable accession all around. I really must congratulate Robbie. But what is Grace's mysterious interest in him? She was very anxious not to have me find out the facts about this latest outrage, poor dear! Was it that she was afraid that I would be unduly exercised over a trifle like this?"
She smiled somewhat grimly as her mind went back to that day when, over her husband's unconscious form thrown at her feet by the benumbing bullets of a gang of rustlers, she had emptied the magazine of his Winchester to such effect that border men rode far out of their way to take off their hats to "Bob Carter's pard." The recollection sent the blood into the fine old cheeks and her hands were again clenched retrospectively upon that shapely bit of walnut and steel which had served her so well that day. Then the lips softened wondrously and a great sweetness flooded her eyes. She was thinking how tenderly he had kissed her powder-blackened hands and bruised shoulder, his heart throbbing with love and wonder and pride of her.
She was very gracious to Douglass that night at dinner, leading him on with skill to talk of himself, and drawing him out to a degree that would have astonished him had he realized it. Under her charming personality, quick and sympathetic intelligence and clever induction, his reserve melted gradually and soon he was talking more freely than he had ever done to human being before. When he had finally made his exit she turned thoughtfully to her children.