Nevertheless, in the face of his apparent acquiescence, while apparently heading out on his usual beat, he whirled behind the first ridge and, proceeding at a fast lope, had covered five miles of the way to El Sol, the Icarzas’ hacienda, by the time Lee came out. Slowing down, then, he rode more leisurely, had covered another mile when, over the crest of a ridge, he sighted Ramon coming at a gallop down the opposite slope. A clump of mesquite and palo verde afforded convenient cover. Forcing his beast in, Jake stooped low and watched Ramon go by, so close that his stirrup whipped the bushes.
It had never been Jake’s habit to notice Mexicans. But now he noted with surprise the change in the young man’s face. The lines deeply plowed down the nose under the cheeks, the hardening of the red, womanish lips, the vindictive black sparkle that had contracted his great dusky eyes into burning black dots, added ten years to his age.
“The Mex is souring in him,” Jake inwardly commented. “That guinea’s liable to try an’ hurt some one. Glad I came.”
Allowing Ramon to pass on, Jake then rode after, and so, progressing from ridge to ridge, keeping always the height of land between them, was less than fifty yards behind when, peeping over the crest, he saw Lee and Gordon coming up the slope.
Another bunch of chaparral afforded cover, and after tying his horse in it, Jake crawled up to the ridge and looked over.
It was not without argument that Gordon had obtained Lee’s consent to accompany her. When she found him standing with two horses at the gate, her brows rose in a troubled arch.
He understood that she hesitated to accuse him of bad taste, and quoted Bull’s last orders to remove the impression. “He said that you were never to ride alone.”
The responsibility being thus shifted, she felt able to speak. “It is rather— Really, I don’t see how I can do anything else.”
“Why go at all? Why not write?”
She shook her head. “I’ve known him since childhood—and have treated him badly. I owe him an apology and it will have to come from my own lips.”