"You fool!" Her voice was a muffled scream. "Oh, you fool! Sweeney could have told you better, any man on the desert could have told you better. The Black Pearl! Why, I've been called the Black Pearl since I was a baby, almost. It's my hair and my skin and my eyes."
"'I'll show you what I'll do.'"
He didn't believe her, but he saw his blunder at once; cursed himself for it, and, mad to retrieve himself, began incoherent explanations and excuses. "Of course," he stammered, "of course, I—I—was just fooling, you know. But, well, what does it matter, anyway? Oh, Pearl, girl! Don't look at me like that. Don't!"
"I'll do worse than look at you, if you come any nearer me," she threatened. "Do you think I ride all over the desert where I've a mind to without protection? I guess not." She lifted her skirt with a quick movement and drew a long knife, keen as a stiletto, from her boot.
Hanson went a little whiter, but he was no coward. "Come on then, finish it for me," he said. "Your eyes are doing it anyway. Oh, Pearl!" he fell again to desperate pleading, "you won't turn me down just for a mistake?"
"Me, the Black Pearl, held cheap!" she muttered and raised her stag-like head superbly, "and by you! You that pick up women and drop them when you're tired of them. Me, the Black Pearl." She turned quickly and ran to her waiting horse, loosening the tether with quick, nervous fingers. Hanson followed her.
"Pearl, you ain't going to leave me?"
But she was already in the saddle.