The girl made no answer. Hastily averting her eyes, she rode on in silence, lips pressed together and chin a little tilted.
“Sulking, eh?” drawled Lynch. “What’s the good? Yuh can’t keep that sort of thing up forever. After we’re—married—”
He paused significantly. The girl’s lip quivered but she set her teeth into it determinedly. Presently, with an effort, she forced herself to speak.
“Aren’t you rather wasting time trying to—to frighten me with that sort of rubbish?” she asked coldly. “In these days marriage isn’t something that can be forced.”
The man’s laugh was not agreeable. “Oh, is that so?” he inquired. “You’re likely to learn a thing or two before long, I’ll say.” 322
His tone was so carelessly confident, so entirely assured, that in an instant her pitiful little pretense of courage was swept away.
“It isn’t so!” she cried, turning on him with wide eyes and quivering lips. “You couldn’t— There isn’t a—real clergyman who’d do—do such a thing. No one could force me to—to— Why, I’d rather die than—”
She paused, choking. Lynch shrugged his shoulders.
“Oh, no, yuh wouldn’t,” he drawled. “Dyin’ is mighty easy to talk about, but when yuh get right down to it, I reckon you’d change yore mind. I don’t see why yore so dead set against me,” he added. “I ain’t so hard to look at, am I? An’ with me as yore husband, things will—will be mighty different on the ranch. You’ll never have to pinch an’ worry like yuh do now.”
Tears blinded her, and, turning away quickly, she stared unseeing through a blurring haze, fighting desperately for at least a semblance of self-control. He was so confident, so terribly sure of himself! What if he could do the thing he said? She did not see how such a ghastly horror could be possible; but then, what did she know of conditions in the place to which he was taking her?