"O!" she said, her voice quavering. "O, I think you are just all right."
Then she bowed her head and wept quietly to herself and as I could not bear to see her thus and do nothing to console her, I very softly rose to steal out. I knew myself a spectator, not an actor in this affair. Out into the red-gold evening I went and looked across the brown, rolling plain and Apache followed me and then George came after us and said quietly to him:
"What game is this you are playing?"
Apache Kid turned to him. "Be guided," he said, "by a woman's intuition. You saw that she knew I was playing no game."
And then he said very quietly: "Are you aware, George, that if I wished I could steal her away from you?"
The breath sucked into George's nostrils in a series of little gasps and came forth similarly.
"I believe you are a devil," he said. "And if it was n't for her, I 'd finish our other little matter right now."
"We will let that rest—for her sake," said Apache Kid. "Still, tell me, are you aware of that? Do you know that I am master here?"
George's face was pale under the sun-brown.
We were standing there in that fashion when there was a sound of slow hoofs in the sand and three ponies came ploughing along the road, an old, dry-faced Indian riding behind the string.