"Gosh, Tommy, how'd it seem, ridin' all the way to town an' back with her settin' up beside you?"
"Just about like you was there, Two-Bits, only we didn't swear quite so much."
"I got lots of respect for you, Tommy, but I think you're a damned liar."
And Beck chuckled to himself as though, perhaps, the other had been right.
"Two weeks now since he wrote," Two-Bits sighed. "He shore ought to be comin'. Gosh, Tom, but he's a bright man!"
Again that night Jane Hunter looked from a window after the lights in the bunk house had gone out and the place was quiet, to see a tall, silent figure move slowly beneath the cottonwoods, watching the house, pausing at times as if listening. Then it went back through the shadows more rapidly, as though satisfied that all was well.
Many times she had watched this but tonight it seemed of greater significance than ever before. He denied her his friendship; he had made Webb his sworn enemy by defending her (she had not told him that part of the tale she heard in Ute Crossing) and yet disclaimed any great interest in her as a motive. Still, he patrolled her dooryard at night!
A sudden impulse to do something that would make him give her that consideration in her presence which he gave before others came to life. His attitude suddenly angered her beyond reason and she felt her body shaking as tears sprang into her eyes. The great thing which she desired was just there, just out of reach and the fact exasperated her, grew, became a fever until, on her knees at the window, hammering the sill with her fists, she cried:
"Tom Beck you're going to love me!"