The temporary and threatening cloud was dissipated by the miner’s rumbling laugh, and they sauntered across the yard, the bay horse looking after them, but standing as firmly as if the loosened reins were tied to a post instead of resting on the ground. A swamper, carrying a bundle of drills, trudged across the yard to the blacksmith shop, as they stood in its doorway.
“I sent you the best men I could pick up,” The Lily said. “You did me a good turn, and I did my best to pay it back. That blacksmith is all right. Some of the others I know, but I don’t know him. Never saw him before. You’d better watch him.”
She pointed at the swamper as coolly as if he were an inanimate object, and he glared at her in return, then dropped his eyes.
“I told you I didn’t run an employment agency,” she went on, “but if any of these fellows 113 get fresh, let me know, and I’ll try to get you others. How does the Cross look, anyway?”
They turned away and accompanied her over the plant above ground, and heard her greet man after man on a level of comradeship, as if she were but a man among men. Her hard self-possession and competence impressed the younger man as a peculiar study. It seemed to him, as he walked beside her thoughtfully, that every womanly trait had been ground from her in the stern mills of circumstance. He had a vague desire to probe into her mind and learn whether or not there still dwelt within it the softness of her sex, but he dared not venture. He stood beside the bandaged veteran as she rode away, a graceful, independent figure.
“Is she all tiger, or part woman?” he said, turning to Mathews, whose eyes had a singularly thoughtful look.
The latter turned to him with a quick gesture, and threw up his unbandaged hand.
“My boy,” he said, “she’s not a half of anything. She’s all tiger, or all woman! God only knows!”