“Oh, Andy!” she cried. And the exclamation seemed to set loose the tide of her surging feelings. “Mad with—you? You? Oh, no. How could I be? I—I love you, Andy. Why,” she added with innocently widening eyes, “I guess I’ve loved you right along always, just always.”
The man’s gaze had been averted as though something of the girl’s innocence abashed him. But in a moment it came back swiftly, hotly. His hands were flung out, and he caught Molly up again in his arms. He held her crushed closely to him, and talked between the kisses which he rained upon her up-turned face.
“I just know, little girl,” he cried thickly. “I surely know it all. I been through it. It’s been the same here, right from the first, when you happened along with me opening out my clearing. I haven’t ever been able to forget. I didn’t want to anyway. I——”
He broke off in a fashion that startled the girl in his arms. And a sudden twinge of alarm shot through her senses. She looked up into the face she loved, and realised that the whole expression of it had changed. The eyes were cold and hard, and they were searching the distant bluff round which the grass-trail to the ploughing skirted.
It required no second thought to tell her the meaning of the change. Besides, there was a sound upon the warm air, the sound of the rattle of chain harness and plodding hoofs.
“It’s Lightning,” she said, recovering herself.
Andy’s arms fell from about her. And together they stood searching the bluff. Presently they beheld Jane and Blue Pete appear from amongst the tree-trunks. And Jane’s capacious back was bearing the grotesque burden of the old choreman with his guns. He was sitting sideways on her vast expanse of rounded breadth, and his heavily-booted feet were dangling.
Molly spoke quickly, anxiously.
“It’s just dinner, Andy,” she said. “You’ll stop around an’ eat?”
She knew Lightning’s antagonism, and she wanted to make sure before the old man came up.