“I don’t believe it,” said Joan staunchly. “Neither does Buck. He would never willingly hand me the trouble you suggest.”
Her words were the result of an impetuous defense of the absent man. To hear this man attack Buck was infuriating. But the moment she had uttered them, the moment she had seen their effect, that meaning laugh which they brought to the storekeeper’s lips, she wished they had never been spoken.
“Don’t guess Buck needs to scrap fer himself with you around, Miss Golden,” he laughed. “Gee! He’s in luck. I wonder!”
Joan choked back her swift-rising indignation. The man wasn’t worth it, she told herself, and hurriedly prepared to depart. But Beasley had no intention of letting her go like that.
“I wonder whether he is in luck, though,” he went on quickly, in a tone he knew the girl would not be able to resist. His estimate was right. She made no further move to go.
“How?” she asked.
“Oh, nuthin’ of consequence,” he said aggravatingly. “I was just thinking of the way folks are talking.” Then he laughed right out; and if Joan had only understood the man she would have known that his merriment was but the precursor of something still more unpleasant.
But such natures as his were quite foreign to her. She merely instinctively disliked him.
“What do you mean?” she asked unsuspiciously.