“If you really mean these people well, Cunningham——” he was beginning curtly, when Cunningham turned to the girl again.
“Please forgive me,” he begged, still white and shaking from his scare. “I didn’t know you were there!”
Her eyes met his wonderingly. Then the expression in them changed. She read the terror and understood its cause. She smiled shyly.
“I was safe. My friends were there.”
She meant the thirty or more Strangers, staring puzzledly at Cunningham and bewildered by his evident horror. Cunningham’s head cleared with a jerk. He felt more than ever like a fool. All men are tempted to feel that way in the presence of a pretty girl, if only to keep the pretty girl company, but Cunningham saw that the Strangers were honestly at a loss. There had been no secret purpose. They were as incredibly uninformed as they had seemed and they had been listening with all the attention their actions had displayed.
“Look here,” said Cunningham abjectly, “I guess I seem like a fool to you, Maria, but I did come here only to see you. I—I’ve been day-dreaming about you. Let me show you why I was scared and you’ll understand what it would have meant if I had hit you.”
He took her hand and fitted it to the pistol-grip. He put her finger on the trigger.
“Now, point it off that way,” he went on anxiously, “squeeze on this thing....”
There was the swift thudding of horses’ hoofs. A nasal voice cried shrilly, “Halt in th’ name of th’ law!”
Cunningham started and instinctively held fast to his revolver, which someone seemed trying to jerk away. He caught a glimpse of flying figures melting into the woods. Then he saw two men on horseback plunging up to the spot. One wore a bright star on his chest and the other carried a rifle.