“What?”
“No, sir.”
“Are you in earnest?”
“Certainly am,” said Tharon. “I ain’t on good terms at present with anything that has t’ do with law.”
David Kenset leaned forward and looked into her face with his deep, compelling eyes.
“I guessed as much from my first knowledge of you the other day,” he answered, “but we are on unfamiliar ground. You have a wrong conception of Government, a perverted idea of law and what it stands for.”
“All right, Mister,” said the girl rising. “We won’t argy. I asked you t’ dinner, but I take it back. I ask ye t’ forgive me my manners, but th’ sooner we part th’ better. Then we won’t be a-hurtin’ each other’s feelin’s. I’m fer law, too, but it ain’t your kind, an’ we ain’t likely to agree.”
She picked up his hat from where it lay on the melodeon and fingered it a bit, smiling at him in the ingenuous manner that was utterly disarming. 93
A slow dark flush spread over the man’s face. He laughed, however, and in reaching for the hat, caught two of her fingers, whether purposely or not, Tharon could not tell.
“Admirable hospitality in the last frontier,” he said. “But perhaps I should not have expected anything different.”