"Indeed, you'll not," she said. "He was defending his own pasture and his own kind. You would have done the same if you were a bull."
Porshinger winced despite himself. There was something distinctly unpleasant in the comparison. She had not called him a bull. Yet that, doubtless, was what she considered him—uncouth and untamed, not broken to polite society.
"I suppose so," he said thoughtfully. "It may be an apt comparison."
"What is an apt comparison?" she asked.
"Comparing me to the bull!"
"Preserve me then from you, if it is apt!" she laughed. "I want no more bulls in mine."
Was he making sport of her or was he serious, she wondered?—and could not decide. Reading his every action through her knowledge of his declared purpose to injure Pendleton and her, she was prone to suspicion. True, he had done what he could to save her from the bull's attack, but any man, were he only half a man, could not have done less.
"Is that an invocation?" he asked.
She looked at him questioningly.
"Is a bull amenable to invocation?" she replied. "Will he withhold his attack if you pray—very hard?"