Why had she never been invited to the parties and dances at Oracle? Why was it that, except for Mother Burton and good Mrs. Wheeler, she had no women friends? Only men had attempted to be friendly with her, and they had approached her only when she met them by chance, alone. She knew them all—they all knew her. Suddenly she remembered how Saint Jimmy had warned her once—long before Hugh Edwards had come to the Cañada del Oro:
“You must be always very careful in your friendships, dear. Before you permit an acquaintance with any man to develop into anything like intimacy, you must know about his past. And by past, I mean parentage—family—ancestors, as well as his own personal record. For let me tell you that no one can escape these things. We are all what the past has made us.”
The inevitable question came in a flash. What was her own past—her parentage—her family? The conclusion came as quickly. She understood now why the old prospectors had never talked to her of her own parents, nor told her how she happened to be their partnership daughter. She understood now the significance of her name, Hillgrove—her two fathers had given her their names because she had no name of her own. Nothing else could so clearly explain the attitude of the people which had been so forcefully impressed upon her by her new consciousness.
Just as the young woman reached this point in her reasoning, her horse stopped of his own volition. The girl had been so engrossed with her thoughts that she had not seen the Lizard ride from behind a thick screen of low cedars beside the trail and check his horse directly across the path. She was not at all frightened when she looked up and saw him waiting there, barring her way. Indeed, she regarded the fellow with a new interest. It was as if one factor in her sad problem had suddenly presented itself in a very definite and tangible form.
“Well,” she said at last, “what do you want?”
The Lizard’s wide-mouthed, leering grin was not in the least reassuring.
“I knowed ye’d be a-comin’ along directly,” he said, “an’ ’lowed we’d ride t’gether.”
“But what if I do not care to ride with you?” she returned curiously.
“Oh, that ain’t a-botherin’ me none. I ain’t noways thin-skinned,” he returned, reining his horse aside from the trail to make room for her. “Come along—ye might as well be sociable like. I know I can’t make much of a-showin’ in eddication an’ fine school talk like you been used to, but I’m jist as good as that lunger Saint Jimmy, er that there fancy neighbor of yourn any day.”
Something in the fellow’s face, or some quality in his tone, brought the blood to Marta’s cheeks.