“He is!” said the girl, indignantly.
“And he’s a fighter,” muttered Tommy Eye.
Rodburd Ide clutched his beard and blinked his round eyes, much perplexed.
“It isn’t a very nice thing, any way you look at it—this having two young men scrapping through this region about my girl. It isn’t that I don’t expect her to get some attention, but this is carrying attention too far.” He took her by the arm and led her to one side. “Nina, there is nothing between you and Colin MacLeod?”
“Nothing, father. We have danced together at the hall, and he has walked home with me—and that’s the only excuse he has for making a fool of himself in this way.”
“And—and this new man, here?”
“I never saw him till this very day! And he’s in love with John Barrett’s daughter. Oh, what an idiot MacLeod is! This stranger will think we’re all fools up here!” Tears of rage and shame filled her eyes.
Ide’s gaze, wandering from her face to Wade and then to the loafers, saw one of Britt’s great wagons topping the distant rise, and he heard a wild chorus of hailing yells.
“You run up to the house, girl,” he said.
“I’ll not,” she replied. And when he began to frown at her she clasped his arm with both her hands and murmured: “He’s a stranger and a gentleman, father, and they’re abusing him. He is nothing to me. He’s in love with another girl. It was through being obliging and kind to me that this horrible mistake has been made. Now, I’ll not run away and leave him to suffer any more.”