“He ran?”
Ashton’s eyes sparkled at the remembrance, and his chest began to expand. Then he met the girl’s clear, direct gaze, and answered modestly: “Well, you see, when I had got down behind the bank our positions were reversed. He was the one in full view. It’s curious, though, Miss Knowles––shooting at that poor calf, under the impression it was a deer, I simply couldn’t hold my rifle steady, while––”
“No wonder, if it was your first deer,” put in the girl. “We call it buck fever.”
“Yes, but wouldn’t you have thought my first bandit––Why, I couldn’t have aimed at him more steadily if I had been made of cast iron.”
“Guess he had made you fighting mad,” she bantered; but under her seeming levity he perceived a 60 change in her manner towards him immensely gratifying to his humbled self-esteem.
“At first I was just a trifle apprehensive––” He hesitated, and suddenly burst out with a candid confession––“No, not a trifle! Really, I was horribly frightened!”
This was more than the girl had hoped from him. She nodded and smiled in open approval. “You had a good right to be frightened. I don’t blame you for spurring that way. Look. It wasn’t only one shot that came close. There’s a neat hair brand on your hawss’s hip that wasn’t there yesterday.”
“Must have been the shot just before we took the bank,” said Ashton, twisting about to look at the streak cut by the bullet. “The first was the only other one that didn’t go higher.”
“But what did the man look like?” questioned Miss Isobel. “I can’t imagine who––Can it be that your guide has a grudge against you on account of his pay?”
“I wouldn’t have thought it possible before yesterday, though he was a surly fellow and inclined to be insolent.”