“Panchito is not quite so afraid of girls as you,” she teased him. “They were playing house. Because the beans were not quite to his liking, he handed Dolores one on the mouth.”
He laughed. “The young dog! At least he has a good working idea of the proper relation of the sexes.”
This, indeed, was tempting Providence! The little gleam appeared again and lingered till, taking her foot in one hand, he lifted her to the saddle without perceptible effort, when it was wiped out by pleased surprise.
Strength and tenderness? Age-long experience has taught woman to value these above all else in man! A skilful diagnostician—the widow, for instance—would have noted and approved her unconscious content as they rode out through the gates and followed the trail up and down the long earth rolls. Sometimes, when the vagaries of travel forced him ahead, her little stealthy glances were not nearly so unconscious; displayed a curiosity both healthy and sincere. And when, as occurred quite frequently, their frank interest was broken by a return of the little gleam, the diagnostician would still have concurred. For it displayed nothing more than the pride proper in a sex which has handled—and mishandled—man, directed his policies and intrigues, set him at the wars, made his peaces, used him as a catspaw to pull its private chestnuts out of the fires of love and hate, while the poor, blinded being imagined all the time that he was following his own ends.
He “lost interest in them after they grew up.” Indeed! Why, the freshness of the morning, the creak and odor of hot leather, rhythmic beat of hoofs, sunlit roll of pastures within the hedging mountains, all the sights and sensations which he mistook for joy in the ride, were nothing more than a setting for her lovely youth. The ebb and flow of her color, easy flexures of her lithe body, counted as much in nature’s cosmogony as the rush of the winds, flush of sunset skies; only, as yet, he did not know it. The “fire and tow” still lacked a “wind.”
They headed, at first, out on the trail which led through Lovell’s rancho to the widow’s; but presently Lee swerved toward the hills. “It is rougher,” she said, “with a few bits of stiff climbing, but both shorter and prettier. It follows an old, old mule trail up a wooded cañon past a country fonda. There I’ll show you the prettiest Mexican girl in all Chihuahua.”
“At the fonda? Then I have seen her.”
Her quick look said quite plainly, “Oh, you have?”
“Sliver took me there the day we caught the raiders. Pretty? I should say!” He added, laughing, “She made me a very nice proposal of marriage, adding the fonda as an extra inducement.”
Her expression now said, “Oh, she did?” But as she looked away, he failed to see it, got only her words, “And you had the heart to refuse?”