“Why should I?” she asked presently, “you don’t owe me anything. I sent you away from my house. I wouldn’t have come here if I’d known where I was goin’. It was a chance.”
“Granted. And yet I want you to come across my threshold, to sit in my big chair. Will you come?”
Never in her life had the girl heard so low a voice. It was soft and gentle, yet full of a vibrant quality that belied its softness. The man himself was unlike Lost Valley men. He wore the olive drab trousers of the semi-military uniform, the leather leggings, a tan leather belt and a soft 141 woolen shirt of the same drab color. It lay open at the throat, and the base of his strong neck was white as a woman’s. The dark eyes upturned to hers were deep and winning. The dark beard showed through his sharply shaven cheeks where the red blood pulsed, like dusky shadows.
A strange man, surely.
Tharon wondered what made him so different from other men she had known. There was Billy who had come into Lost Valley from somewhere “below,” and Conford, and Curly. Jack Masters had been born in the Valley. So had Bent Smith. These men were her men, like herself and Jim Last. This man was from “below,” too, yet he was unlike.
While she studied him he met her glance with the same grave look.
Presently, without a word, she swung herself from the saddle, dropped El Rey’s rein, and stepped around his shoulder.
“All right,” she said briefly, “but I won’t stay any longer than I let you stay.”
For the first time Kenset laughed.
“Twenty minutes, then,” he said, “I don’t think you let me exceed that limit.”