Molly led the way, her sure-footed mare infinitely more nimble than the other amongst the boulders. Neither spoke a word. Both were thinking hard. Molly was quietly making up her mind to ascertain the stranger’s identity, and then leave him while she continued her way alone. Jim Pryse was, on the other hand, deliberately intent upon riding with her just as far as she would permit him.
The girl drew rein at the edge of the forest, and Beelzebub gallantly came to a halt beside the pinto and rubbed his muzzle against her white neck.
“My way lies east,” she said quietly, as again she encountered the smile of the man.
“Mine, too, for a mile or so,” Jim said casually. “Then I break west up Three-Way Creek. There’s no get-out of this valley before that. We best ride on. We’re mostly lonesome folk. Company’s swell when we happen on it.”
Molly’s resolve was scattered to the winds. The man’s smile was irresistible. Besides, there could be no harm. And, anyway, what he said was perfectly true. This valley went on with only a break here and there right down to her home. The creek was the same that supplied the water-front on her farm, miles away on. If he were riding east, it would be simply churlish to refuse to ride with him.
“You know,” she said, with a frank laugh, “I’d just fixed it in my mind to quit you right here. You see, you’re a stranger.”
Jim nodded, watching the light in her eyes.
“That’s dead right, too,” he said. And then his eyes sobered admonishingly. “It doesn’t do riding around these hills with stranger men. Now you can’t tell. Maybe I’m a ‘hold-up,’ looking around for young gals on the ‘stray.’ Maybe I’m a ‘two-gun’ man. Or a cattle thief. Maybe I get around eating up any old thing in the human way all the time. You surely can’t tell. The more I think of all the things I might be the tougher it makes me feel. Now, say, hadn’t you best make me ride ahead of you, and hand out my talk over my shoulder, while you keep a gun pushed up against my spine? It ’ud help make things safe—for you.”
Molly broke into a peal of happy laughter.
“I like fool talk,” she cried. “But you hit things right in a way, too. Still, my gun, which is right here in my coat pocket, can stay where it is, and we can ride aside each other. Let’s get on. I need to make home by sundown. There’s all of fifteen miles of this valley to make. And I haven’t located a sight of my fool cows yet.”