His reply was irrelevant, a deliberate refusal to notice her ungenerous misinterpretation of his offer.
"Do you mind if I gather a few Three Bar colts round here close and break out my own string before they get back?" he asked.
"Anything you like," she repeated. "I'm not going to quarrel. I've made up my mind to that. I'll be gone the rest of the day."
Five minutes later he saw her riding down the lane. She was not seeking companionship but rather solitude and for hours she drifted aimlessly across the range, sometimes dismounting on some point that afforded a good view and reclining in the warm spring sun. Dusk was falling when she rode back to the Three Bar. As she turned her sorrel, Papoose, into the corral she noticed several four-year-old colts in the pasture lot. As she returned to the house Harris appeared in the door.
"Grub-pile," he announced.
They sat down to a meal of broiled steak, mashed potatoes, hot biscuits, coffee and raspberry jam. She had deliberately absented herself through the noon hour and well past the time for evening meal, confidently expecting to find him impatiently waiting for her to return and prepare food for him.
"You make good biscuits—better than those Waddles stirs up," she said. "Though I'd never dare tell him so." It was the first time she had conceded that there might be even a taint of good in him.
"Well, yes—they're some better than those I usually turn out," he confessed. "Having a lady to feed I flaked the lard in cold instead of just melting it and stirring her in like I most generally do. I'm right glad that you consider them a success."
When the meal was finished she rose without a word and went into her own quarters, convinced that this desertion would certainly call forth a protest; but the man calmly went about the business of washing the dishes as if he had expected nothing else, and presently she heard the door close behind him and immediately afterwards a light appeared in the bunk-house window.
The rattle of pots and pans roused her before daylight. Some thirty minutes later he called to her.