“There’s going to be lots of paprika in this Western hike,” joyfully he assured himself—“or do we call it chili?”
[CHAPTER II]
A GIRL NAMED BENICIA
Grant Hickman was not one of that tribe dignified by the name of he-flirts. He abominated the whole slimy clan with the loathing of a clean man. When he had seized upon the part of studied rudeness toward the Spaniard it was not with the ulterior purpose of winning a smile or paving the way for acquaintance with a pretty woman; Grant’s vivid recollection of the sidewalk cafés of Paris in war time and their hunting women left him cold toward the type that is careless of men’s approaches. In flouting the foreigner and preventing his scheme to gain a place in the car with the girl he had bullied on the station platform the New York man had acted merely on instinct; he had protected a girl from annoyance. Yet now that he had won through by dint of crass boorishness—and the young man’s conscience gave him a twinge over the substance of his discourtesy—he suffered a not unreasonable curiosity regarding the possessor of that glorious beacon in the seat across the aisle.
Who was she? What circumstances had led to that scene on the platform which had ended with the unexpected dagger thrust of the steel hair ornament? Was this little black-and-tan whipper-snapper a lover—a brother—blackmailer? Grant’s galloping imagination built up flimsy hypotheses only to rip them apart. And his eyes dwelt upon the soft involutions of flame coloured hair, which were the only physical indices of personality granted him thus far.
Once the object of his conjectures shifted her seat so that a profile peeped out from behind the wide seat arm. Grant’s eyes hungrily conned delectable details: one broad wing of hair sweeping down in a line of studied carelessness over a forehead somewhat low and rounded; fine line of nose with the hint of a passionate spirit in the modelling; mouth that was all girlish, mobile, ready to reflect whims or laughter. The sort of mouth, Grant reflected, that could load a laugh with poison—even as he had seen it done that tense instant on the platform at El Paso—or freight it with sweetness for a favoured one. A world of fire and seduction untried lay in the full round lips, yet a chin with the thrust of will in it warned that the promise of those lips was jealously guarded.
A broad sheaf of sunlight lay across her cheek. Grant saw that hers was not the usual apple tint of the red-haired, the characteristic skin so delicate as to suggest translucence. Rather a touch of the sun had spread an impalpable film of tan, warm as the colour of old ivory, over cheek and throat. Duskiness of a southland dyed cheek and throat despite the anomaly of the burning hair, quite Celtic.