“No matter what they say I’ve done. You’ll keep faith?”
“I don’t care what you’ve done,” she flung back bitterly. “It’s none of my affair. I told you that before. Men come out here for all sorts of reasons. We don’t ask for a bill of particulars.”
“Then I’ll be right glad to go down to the Bar Double G with you, and say thanks for the chance.”
He had dismounted when they first reached the pass. Now she swung to the saddle and he climbed behind her. They reached presently one of the nomadic trails of the cattle country which wander leisurely around hills and over gulches along the line of least resistance. This brought them to a main traveled road leading to the ranch.
They rode in silence until the pasture fence was passed.
“What am I to tell them your name is?” she asked stiffly.
He took his time to answer. “Tom Morse is a good name, don’t you think? How would T. L. Morse do?”
She offered no comment, but sat in front of him, unresponsive as the sphinx. The rigor of her flat back told him that, though she might have to keep his shameful secret for the sake of her own, he could not presume upon it the least in the world.
Melissy turned the horse over to a little Mexican 33 boy and they were just mounting the steps of the porch when a young man cantered up to the house. Lean and muscular and sunbaked, he looked out of cool, gray eyes upon a man’s world that had often put him through the acid test. The plain, cactus-torn chaps, flannel shirt open at the sinewy throat, dusty, wide-brimmed hat, revolver peeping from its leather pocket on the thigh: every detail contributed to the impression of efficiency he created. Even the one touch of swagger about him, the blue silk kerchief knotted loosely around his neck, lent color to his virile competency.
He dragged his horse to a standstill and leaped off at the same instant. “Evenin’, ’Lissie.”