“Of what?”
Grant turned and pointed to the men, sturdy toilers starved out of bleak Dakota and axe-men farmers from the forests of Michigan. “Of these, and the rest who are coming by and by,” he said. “Still, I don’t want to go into that; and you seem angry. You haven’t offered to shake hands with me, Hetty.”
Miss Torrance sat very still, one hand on the switch, and another on the bridle, looking at him with a little scornful smile on her lips. Then she glanced at the prairie beyond the severed fence.
“That land belongs to my friends,” she said.
Grant’s face grew a trifle wistful, but his voice was grave. “They have had the use of it, but it belongs to the United States, and other people have the right to farm there now. Still, that needn’t make any trouble between you and me.”
“No?” said the girl, with a curious hardness in her inflection; but her face softened suddenly. “Larry, while you only talked we didn’t mind; but no one fancied you would have done this. Yes, I’m angry with you. I have been home ’most a month, and you never rode over to see me; while now you want to talk politics.”
Grant smiled a trifle wearily. “I would sooner talk about anything else; and if you ask him, your father will tell you why I have not been to the range. I don’t want to make you angry, Hetty.”
“Then you will give up this foolishness and make friends with us again,” said the girl, very graciously. “It can’t come to anything, Larry, and you are one of us. You couldn’t want to take away our land and give it to this rabble?”
Hetty was wholly bewitching, as even Flora Schuyler, who fancied she understood the grimness in the man’s face, felt just then. He, however, looked away across the prairie, and the movement had its significance to one of the company, who, having less at stake, was the more observant. When he turned again, however, he seemed to stand very straight.
“I’m afraid I can’t,” he said.