“What’s this?” he said, and there was a light suspicion of thickness in his voice, “my wife got com-ny?”
Kenset heard the woman catch her breath, and the feeling of pity that had taken him at first for her intensified.
“No, Mr. Courtrey,” he said advancing, “but you have,” and he held out his hand. “I’m Kenset, from the foothills.”
Courtrey, not four feet from him, did not look at the hand. Instead the glittering eyes under the hat-brim looked steadily into his with an expression that only one man in a hundred could have interpreted.
That one man, however, stood by the watering trough, his hand on the neck of a drinking horse––Cleve Whitmore who watched Courtrey without blinking.
For a moment Kenset stood so, his hand extended, waiting. Then the colour rose in his face and he drew back the hand, raised it, scrutinized it smilingly, and put it quietly on his hip. 127
Still smiling he raised his eyes again to Courtrey’s face.
“Courtrey,” he said, this time without the Mr., “I’ve come to Lost Valley to stay. I had hoped to be friends with all my neighbours. It would have made my work easier. However, with or without, I stay.”
And he picked up his hat, set it on his head, walked over to the brown horse, flung up the rein, mounted and rode out of the Stronghold in utter silence.
His face was flaming, the blood of outraged dignity and deep anger beat in his temples like a drum. As he rode farther away he heard the embarrassing silence broken by the hoarse shouts of laughter of half drunken men.