"You'd bring Pierre anywhere? Say, lady, that's like hearing the sheep talk about leading the wolf around by the nose. If all the men in the ranges can't catch him, or make him budge an inch out of the way he's picked, do you think you could stir him?"
Jeering laughter shook him; it seemed that he would never be done with his laughter, yet there was a hint of the hysterically mirthless in it. It came to a jarring stop.
He said: "D'you think he's just bein' driven around by chance? Lady, d'you think he even wants to get out of this life of his? No, he loves it! He loves the danger. D'you think a man that's used to breathing in a whirlwind can get used to living in calm air? It can't be done!"
And the girl answered steadily: "For every man there is one woman, and for that woman the man will do strange things."
"You poor, white-raced, whimpering fool," snarled the boy, gripping at his gun again, "d'you dream that you're the one that's picked out for Pierre? No, there's another!"
"Another? A woman who——"
"Who loves Pierre—a woman that's fit for him. She can ride like a man; she can shoot almost as straight and as fast as Pierre; she can handle a knife; and she's been through hell for Pierre, and she'll go through it again. She can ride the trail all day with him and finish it less fagged than he is. She can chop down a tree as well as he can, and build a fire better. She can hold up a train with him or rob a bank and slip through a town in the middle of the night and laugh with him about it afterward around a camp-fire. I ask you, is that the sort of a woman that's meant for Pierre?"
And the girl answered, with bowed head: "She is."
She cried instantly afterward, cutting short the look of wild triumph on the face of the boy: "But there's no such woman; there's no one who could do these things! I know it!"
The boy sprang to his feet, flushing as red as the girl was white.