As she slipped it into the pocket of her blue woolen peasant-skirt, her quick eye caught a movement among the hazel bushes on the hillside to her right. She sank to the ground and lay huddled there.
CHAPTER XXV
KAMERAD
Down the slope, through the thicket, came a man. She could see his legs only. He wore dust-coloured breeches and tan puttees, like Sticky Smith's and Kid Glenn's, only he wore no big, clanking Mexican spurs.
The man passed in front of her, his burly body barely visible through the leaves, but not his features.
She rose, turned, ran over the moss, hurried through the ferns of the warren, retracing her steps, and arrived breathless at the lavoir. And scarcely had she dropped to her knees and seized soap and paddle, than a squat, bronzed, powerfully built young man appeared on the opposite bank of the stream, stepping briskly out of the bushes.
He did not notice her at first. He looked[pg 324] about for a place to jump, found one, leaped safely across, and came on at a swinging stride across the meadow.
The girl, bending above the water, suddenly struck sharply with her paddle.
Instantly the man halted in his tracks, knee deep in clover.
Maryette, apparently unconscious of his presence, continued to soap and scrub and slap her wash, singing in her clear, untrained voice of a child the chansonette she had made that morning. But out of the corner of her eyes she kept him in view—saw him come sauntering forward as though reassured, became aware that he had approached very near, was standing behind her.