Johnny was so excited that the noon-time pedestrians stared at him as they passed.
The boy was unmindful of them until a girl’s mocking laugh reached his ears. He turned, then, to stare her down; but the expression on his face changed with magic swiftness, for, standing there watching him, her face pressed close to old Dan’s window, was Molly Kent.
She had been watching him these many seconds. A roguish light swam in her eyes as Johnny’s mouth sagged with amazement.
“Ride him, cowboy!” she called. “Ride him!”
It was the old Diamond-Bar battle-cry.
Johnny shook his head dully. “I’m damned!” was all he could say.
CHAPTER X
MOLLY KENT
Sweet Molly Kent was as a flower blooming in the grayness of wind-swept Winnemucca. Johnny wondered how she contrived to be so clean and pressed. He had been to San Francisco and seen the fashionable folk of Grant Avenue. Molly could have walked among them this day to their envy.
On the range she wore fitting clothes, but never—Heaven forbid!—the side-show “cow-girl” costume which Western girls are popularly supposed to wear. Brown tweeds of a sensible cut, and boots to match the best, served her. If she made any concession to the popular idea it was in the wearing of a small sombrero. Johnny had seen her so attired times enough to have overcome his awe of her. This new dress of today, however, was thoroughly disconcerting. Wise Molly divined his embarrassment and, womanlike, enjoyed it.
The flash of her gleaming white teeth only added to the boy’s uneasiness. It was so much better to observe girls of her type from a distance. Not that she was merely pretty or in a true sense beautiful. Molly’s chin was too masculine for that, her eyes too wide-set. And yet it was her eyes and that very chin which compelled attention. There was sense in this girl, a clean body and a clean mind. Loyalty spoke, too.