He would ride beside her or sit at night by the fire in her father's cabin and talk for hours, giving of his experience well, for he was a glib talker. He asked nothing in return ... openly, but while he talked his eyes were on her eyes, prodding their depths, on her red mouth, hungering, on her wonderful throat, fired by desire. He bided his time, for his was a choice prize.
Now and then she talked to him of Jane Hunter and though her allusions were scornful and her face assumed that hostility, he knew that this only resulted from her envy, the curiosity which she would not let come into being. He played upon this, dropping hints of the reason for his coming west, lying insinuations of his relationships with the mistress of the big ranch, each hint a fertile seed planted in the rich soil of her imagination.
One afternoon they dismounted in a clump of willows where early in the season and in wet summers a spring bubbled under a rim rock. Now it was dry, almost dust-dry in places, and the girl sat on the grass while Hilton stretched at her feet, smoking idly.
He talked to her for long and when he paused she said, looking far away:
"I'd like to see somethin' else besides this. I'd like to have some of the chances other gals have. I'd give anything for a chance to be somebody!"
He threw away his cigarette.
"I'd give anything to give you a chance, Bobby," he said.
"Yes, but you can't!" she laughed hopelessly. "You're a gentleman and I.... Why, I'm just the daughter of a nester."
"And maybe that very combination of circumstances gives me my chance to give you yours.
"I should like very much to take you east, Bobby."