Collins, with his eyes on the light-shot waves that crowned her vivid face, wondered whether he was or not. If she had been a woman to desire in the queenly, half-insolent indifference of manner with which she had first met him, how much more of charm lay in this piquant gaiety, in the warm sweetness of her softer and more pliant mood! It seemed to him she had the gift of comradeship to perfection.
They unsaddled and ate lunch in the shade of the live-oaks at El Dorado Springs, which used to be a much-frequented watering-hole in the days when Camp Grant thrived and mule-skinners freighted supplies in to feed Uncle Sam’s pets. Two hours later they stopped again at the edge of the Santa Cruz wash, two miles from the Rocking Chair Ranch.
It was while they were resaddling that Collins caught sight of a cloud of dust a mile or two away. He unslung his field-glasses, and looked long at the approaching dust-swirl. Presently he handed the binoculars to Leroy.
“Five of them; and that round-bellied Papago pony in front belongs to Sheriff Forbes, or I’m away wrong.”
Leroy lowered the glasses, after a long, unflurried inspection. “Looks that way to me. Expect I’d better be burning the wind.”
In a few sentences he and Collins arranged a meeting for next day up in the hills. He trailed his spurs through the dust toward Alice Mackenzie, and offered her his brown hand and wistful smile irresistible. “Good-by. This is where you get quit of me for good.”
“Oh, I hope not,” she told him impulsively. “We must always be friends.”
He laughed ruefully. “Your father wouldn’t indorse those unwise sentiments, I reckon—and I’d hate to bet your husband would,” he added audaciously, with a glance at Collins. “But I love to hear you say it, even though we never could be. You’re a right game, stanch little pardner. I’ll back that opinion with the lid off.”
“You should be a good judge of those qualities. I’m only sorry you don’t always use them in a good cause.”
He swung himself to his saddle. “Good-by.”