"When did I say that?" he countered.
"Yesterday, when I told you Charlie Miller had been held up, you intimated that a long-headed man had planned the whole thing. That means Trevors, doesn't it?"
"One of us," said Lee calmly, ignoring her question and looking her straight in the eyes, "is going back. Which one?"
"Neither!" she retorted promptly. She even smiled confidently at him. "For I won't. And you won't."
"Do you need to be told," he asked her coolly, "that this is no sort of job for a girl? You'd only be in the way."
"If you want glittering generalities," she jeered at him, "then listen to this: A man's job, first, last, and all the time, is to be chivalrous to a woman! And not a bumptious boor!"
With that she spurred by him, taking the trail which led off to the right and so under the cliffs and to the mouth of a great, ragged chasm. In spite of him, Bud Lee grinned after her. And, seeing that she was not to be turned back, he followed.
They left their horses and followed the old footpath, made their way into the chasm deeper and deeper and little by little climbed upward. The climb was less difficult than it looked, and fifteen minutes brought them to the upland plateau and to the door of an old cabin, made of logs, set back in a tiny grove of cedars.
"I haven't been here for a year," cried the girl, forgetful of the constraint which had held them until now. "It's like getting back home for the first time! I love it."
"So do I," Lee said within himself.