“Then I guess ther’s a stranger chasin’ up,” he said sharply. “We’re follered, ma’am.”
CHAPTER XXXI
Lightning Becomes a Friend
“LIGHTNING thinks we’ve been followed, Jim.”
Jim Pryse surveyed the lean figure that suggested nothing so much as a bare frame strung with whipcord. He knew Lightning well enough from his sister’s account of him, and from the talk of Molly on their memorable ride together. But this was the first time he had set eyes upon him. And from his head to his heels the old cattleman became an object of the keenest interest.
Lightning gave no sign. And somehow the whole poise of the man suggested to Jim something of his boyhood’s ideas of the calm of the Red Indian. There was even more than that in the likeness—the man’s face and high cheekbones, the aquilinity of his nose, and the thinness of his capacious mouth. Only were his eyes, and the foolish tatter of his chin-whisker, anachronisms.
They were standing on the verandah, and Lightning was studying the white-haired man with no less an interest. The two men were taking each other’s measure.
“We were.”
Lightning corrected the doubt in Blanche’s statement with cold assurance. Then he went on, quite undeflected from his purpose.
“I come fer Molly,” he said. “I got her pony to take her back.”
There was a negative movement of Jim’s head. He turned to Blanche.