“What is she doing here?”
He cut off Billy’s welcome with the sharp question, and while listening to explanations his gray eyes drew into points of black. In the middle of it he burst out, “You don’t mean to say that you fell for it as easily as that?”
“Fell for what?”
Billy’s round eyes merely added to his irritation. “You chump! didn’t you see the trap?”
“The trap?”
“Yes, trap! T-r-a-p, trap! Got it into your fat head? Don’t you see that you have catalogued us with the San Nicolas people as a pair of blackguards forever? Oh, you fat head!”
That was not all. While he stormed on, saying things that he would willingly have taken back a minute later, every bit of its usual mercurial humor drained out of Billy’s face. Over Seyd’s shoulder he could see the girl in the doorway. A certain dark expectancy in her glance told that she knew herself to be the bone of contention. As a doe might watch the conflict of two bucks in the forest, she looked on, and, meeting Billy’s eye, her glance touched off his anger.
“Stop that!” he suddenly yelled. “Stop it or I’ll hand you one! I will, for sure! What do I care for your San Nicolas people? I didn’t come down here to do a social stunt, and why should the opinions of a lot of greasers cut any ice? Let ’em go hang. The girl looks all right to me.”
“All right! You innocent!” Shaking with anger, Seyd turned and spoke to Caliban, who was mixing mortar close by. “As I thought! If half he says is true her reputation would hang a cat.”
But Billy’s jaw only set the harder. While he might easily have been persuaded out of his idyl, he was not to be driven. Out of pure obstinacy he growled: “What of it? I reckon her morals won’t spoil the food. She’s proved she can cook, and that is all I want. She’s going to stay.”