“Well, I say, who might you be?” she asked.
“I might be a good many people, but I am somebody else,” answered Nick laughingly.
“Whoever you are, there is one thing certain, and that is that you are a cool one,” she said.
“I do feel rather cool after having been pressed down into the mud by your husband there,” said Nick Carter.
“Husband, indeed!” she sniffed. “Do you suppose that I would marry an old fossil like that thing over in the water? I reckon I could get finer men than he dares to be.”
“I have not seen his face,” said Nick apologetically.
“If he was a handsome young feller like you,” continued the woman, “I might not mind.”
Nick, for the first time, took a good look at her as she stood in the glare of the lantern.
She was rawboned, with the shoulders of a husky young farmer; her hair was as fiery a red as it could possibly be; her face was disfigured by a scar that ran down the left cheek; her brilliant black eyes were the only redeeming feature of the woman’s face.
Her voice was the thing that had attracted Nick—it was discordance itself.