"Good-morning, Miss Rachel."
"Klahowya, tillikum," she answered, bringing him back to a remembrance of his Chinook. "Jack Genesee, do you intend ever to come to see us—I mean to walk in like your old self, instead of looking through the window at night?"
"Looking—"
"Don't lie," she said coolly, "for I saw you, though no one else did. Now tell me what's wrong. Why won't you come in the house?"
"Society is more select in the Kootenai hills than it was a year ago;" he answered with a sort of defiance. "Do you reckon there is any woman in the house who would speak to me if she could get out of it—anyone except you?"
"Oh, I don't count."
"I had an 'invite' this morning," he added grimly—"not because they wanted me, but because your new friend over there wanted someone to give him points about the country; so I've got him to thank for being wanted at all. Now don't look like that—or think I'm kicking. It's a square enough deal so far as I'm concerned, and it stands to reason a man of my stamp hasn't many people pining for him in a respectable house. For the matter of that, it won't do you any good to be seen talking to me this long. I'm going."
"All right; so am I. You can go along."
"With you?"
"Certainly."