"And will you forgive me, Little Buck?" plaintively whispered Tot, when the foreman had turned away.
The bitter answer of Little Buck Wolfe, who in this black hour was mostly mountaineer, came promptly.
"I don't think I will," he said.
XIV
It was with a growing feeling of contempt for himself that Wolfe watched Tot Singleton go silently and broken-heartedly toward her old home in the south end of the basin. He knew that he had been grossly unkind to her, to say the least. She had done that which she had done only because of her deep interest in his own welfare. She had been his guardian angel, ever ready to make any sacrifice for him, and she had never asked anything of him but—forgiveness.
He grappled with the foolish primitive pride that had more than once come near to being his undoing, and put it down.
"Wait, Tot!" he said.
Instead of waiting, she began to run from him. She, too, had a certain amount of primitive pride.
And he frowned and let her go.