The boy's eyes lit.
"Bully!" he cried eagerly. "That way I wouldn't have to wash lousy clothes for the bunkhouse. Would I? Then they wouldn't be able to fire rocks at me when I sassed 'em. Bully!"
"I'll speak to Lal Hobhouse about it."
The hope died out of the boy's eyes.
"You won't tell him wot I said, ma'am?" he pleaded. "You see, I was jest settin' you wise, you bein' new around here. It ain't friendly not to put folks wise, is it? He's a bully feller sure, ma'am, an' I ain't got a word agin him. I hain't reely. I wouldn't 'a' sed a word if I'd tho't——"
"Don't you worry, boy," Elvine cried, as she turned her horse about. "I wouldn't give you away. I wouldn't give anybody away—now. You see, you never know how things of that sort can come back on you."
The obvious relief in the boy's dirty face was more than sufficient to bring back the smile to Elvine's eyes, which, for the moment, had become almost painfully serious. But as she rode away leaving the boy gawking after her she quickly returned to the mood which had only been broken by the interlude.
It was an interlude not easily forgotten, however. It had brought home to her a fresh revelation. And it had come in the boy's final appeal not to give him away. A fierce sense of shame surged through her heart. It communicated itself to her eyes, and displayed itself further in the deep flush on her beautiful cheeks. Yet its reason must have remained obscure to any observer.
She rode on urging her pony to a gait which set him reaching at his bit. She sat her saddle in a fashion which belonged solely to the prairie. The long stirrups and straight limb. The lightness, and that indescribable something which suggests the single personality of horse and rider.
She had no intention of returning to the ranch house until the noonday meal, and meanwhile it was her purpose to explore something of the vast domain which her husband controlled.