“I am glad you tricked me into carrying you on my back,” he returned gravely. “I don’t regret the ambush, the bump on the head, the thumps and kicks—anything. The fact is——”
“I wonder if you promised a horse to that young lady?” she interrupted.
“I did. How did you guess? And her brother bet a thousand dollars I wouldn’t find anything of the blood of Eclipse in these woods. But all that doesn’t matter. It all seems rather idiotic to me now. The real meaning of all this—of my coming to this country—is—well, I struck town just in time to pull you out of a fire, didn’t? And I didn’t even stop to take a look at what I had saved! Good Lord! And now you are saving my life; and even horses of the blood of Eclipse don’t seem so important to me now. It can’t be just chance that——”
“Aren’t you forgetting something?”
“No fear! I haven’t forgotten a word you have said, nor a single——”
“But your mother—and the woman you promised the horse to!”
“I shall give her the horse, if I get it. But it doesn’t matter much, either way.”
“You asked her to be your wife.”
“Twice, I believe—but she said she wouldn’t.”
“She wouldn’t! Why?”