“Can’t say, but the woods is full of them as is achin’ for the chance. Some day when you’re loose on the range maybe you’ll slip under.”
Hilda’s scorn had turned to anger. Holy Smoke’s body was against the screen door, bulging the wirework in. His cunning gaze never left her face. He had lowered his voice meaningly.
“How about that English fly, Miss? He’s getting fair handy with the lariat, they do say.”
Hilda had flushed scarlet and drawn back with blazing eyes, but the words of the cowhand on the outer side of the door stopped her in her premeditated flight and sent a cold shiver all over her.
“Ye needn’t to worry ’bout him, Miss Hilda. He ain’t likely to swing his lariat in your direction. It’s hooked already over another one.”
Hilda’s dry lips, against her will, moved in burning query:
“Who do you mean?”
She scarcely knew her own voice. Something wild and primitive was surging through her being. She wanted to cry out, to hurl something into the face of the grinning man at the door, yet fascinated, tormented, she stayed for an answer:
“Her that’s under his pillow. Her that he takes along of him wherever he goes and has locked up in one of them gold gimcracks as if her face was radio. It’d make you laugh to see him take it to bed with him, and tuck it just as if it was heaven under his pillow and——”
Hilda stared blankly at the man on the other side of the door. She uttered not a word. Her hand shot out, as if she were dealing a blow to him, and the inside door banged hard.