He had a way of thrusting his disagreeable tasks upon his fellow beings before they were prepared either to accept or refuse a proposition. He succeeded here so promptly that the girl in the car made no effort to restrain her amusement. She was radiantly smiling as she leaned above the wheel where the two men were presently at work.
In the midst of the toil a sound of whistling came upon the air. The girl in the auto looked up, alertly. It was the Toreador's song from Carmen that she heard, riotously rendered. A moment later the whistler appeared—and an exclamation all but escaped the girl's red, parted lips.
Mounted on a calico pony of strikingly irregular design, a horseman had halted at the bend of a trail that led to the rear of the station. He saw the girl and his whistling ceased.
From his looks he might have been a bandit or a prince. He was a roughly dressed, fearless-looking man of the hills, youthful, tall, and as carelessly graceful in the saddle as a fish in its natural clement.
The girl's brown eyes and his blue eyes met. She did not analyze the perfect symmetry or balance of his features; she only knew his hair and long moustache were tawny, that his face was bronzed, that his eyes were bold, frank depths of good humor and fire. He was splendid to look at—that she instantly conceded. And she looked at him steadily till a warm flush rose to the pink of her ears, when her glance fell, abashed, to the pistol that hung on his saddle, and so, by way of the hoofs of his pinto steed, to the wheel, straight down where she was leaning.
The station-keeper glanced up briefly.
"Hullo, Van," was all he said.
The horseman made no reply. He was still engaged in looking at the girl when Bostwick half rose, with a tool in hand, and scowled at him silently.
It was only a short exchange of glances that passed between the pair, nevertheless something akin to a challenge played in the momentary conflict, as if these men, hurled across the width of a continent to meet, had been molded by Fate for some antagonistic clash, the essence of which they felt thus soon with an utter strangeness between them.
Bostwick bent promptly to his labors with the tire. The girl in the tonneau stepped past her maid and opened the door on the further side of the car. Bostwick stood up at once.