In a few seconds he was able to state with conviction that not only was the rider a young woman, but that she was also a most remarkably attractive specimen of her sex. And George Arlington Hemingwood was not a man who allowed opportunity to knock at his door without an answer. He stopped a few feet in front of the horse and smiled up at the girl.
“I beg your pardon, but could you tell me the name of the town that seems to be at the end of this road?”
Her piquant face, framed by the Panama and bobbed hair, dimpled slightly as she pulled up her horse.
“Which end of the road?” she enquired.
“The one I’m headed for—it seemed to be the biggest.”
“East Point,” she informed him. “Did you have a forced landing?”
“You talk like a flyer!” grinned Hemingwood. “No, I came down on purpose. I thought I was near East Point, but it’s hard to tell from the air. Particularly in such thickly settled country,” he added.
She chuckled, a peculiarly infectious performance as she accomplished it. She was a tiny little thing, Hemingwood thought, and her small, oval face with its saucily tilted nose and rather wide mouth possessed a charm which far transcended the mere beauty of more regular features. She did not look as if a resident of the mountains.
“You know, pretty lady, I’ve read a few flying stories in some of our magazines, and in every one some beautiful girl always materializes as soon as an airplane lands,” he remarked. “They just pop out of bushes in the wilderness or from behind sand hummocks in the desert. But in five years of flying it’s the first time I’ve seen it happen!”
“Well, this is the first time you’ve ever landed anywhere near me,” she returned, mirth in her gray eyes.