“We’ll go back,” he told her.
She made no protest. Indeed, she displayed a caution in lowering herself that surprised him. Every foothold she tested carefully with her weight. Once she asked him to place her shoe in the crevice for her. He had never seen her take so much time 39 in making sure or be so fussy about her personal safety.
Safely on the ledge again, she attempted a second time to dismiss him. “Thank you, Mr. Flatray. I won’t take any more of your time.”
He looked at her steadily before he spoke. “You’re mighty high-heeled, ’Lissie. You know my name ain’t Mr. Flatray to you. What’s it all about? I’ve told you twice I couldn’t get here any sooner.”
She flamed out at him in an upblaze of feminine ferocity. “And I tell you, that I don’t care if you had never come. I don’t want to see you or have anything to do with you.”
“Why not?” He asked it quietly, though he began to know that her charge against him was a serious one.
“Because I know what you are now, because you have made us believe in you while all the time you were living a lie.”
“Meaning what?”
“I was gathering poppies on the other side of Antelope Pass this afternoon.”
“What has that got to do with me being a liar and a scoundrel,” he wanted to know.