"But your daughter is just crazy on this life," he suggested.
The old man's smile had passed.
"Sure." Then he sighed. "She's been my partner ever since, sort of junior partner. But sometime she 'll be—going." Then his slow smile crept back into his eyes. "Then it'll be winter all the time. Then it'll have to be coal, an' again coal—right along."
They emerged from the woods, and instinctively Gordon gazed across at the distant ranch. In a moment he was standing stock still staring across the valley. And swiftly there leaped into his eyes a dangerous light. Mallinsbee halted, too. He shaded his eyes, and an ominous cloud settled upon his heavy brows.
"Some one driven out," he muttered, examining narrowly a team and buggy standing at the veranda.
Gordon emitted a sound that was like a laugh, but had no mirth in it.
"It's a man, and he's talking to Miss Mallinsbee on the veranda. It don't take me guessing his identity. That suit's fixed right on my mind."
"David Slosson," muttered Mallinsbee, and he hurried on at an increased pace.
It was after the midday dinner which David Slosson had shared with them.
When her father and Gordon arrived, and before objection could be offered by anybody, Hazel asked her uninvited guest to stay to dinner. David Slosson, without the least hesitation, accepted the invitation. In this manner all opposition from her father was discounted, all display of either man's displeasure avoided. She contrived, with subtle feminine wit, to twist the situation to the ends she had in view. She disliked the visitor intensely. The part she had decided to play troubled her, but she meant to carry it through whatever it cost her, and she felt that an opportunity like the present was not to be missed.