O’Halloran looked drolly at him. “I’m liking your nerve, young man. I pull the chestnuts out of the fire for yez and, likely enough, get burned. You walk off with your chestnut, and never a ‘Thank ye’ for poor Mickey the catspaw.”
“It doesn’t look like quite a square deal, does it?” laughed the ranger. “Well, we might vary the program a bit. Bucky O’Connor, Arizona ranger, can’t stop and take a hand in such a game, but I don’t know anything to prevent a young gipsy from Spain staying over a few days.”
“If you stay, I shall,” announced the boy Frank.
“You’ll do nothing of the kind, seh. You’ll do just as I say, according to the agreement you made with me when I let you come,” was Bucky’s curt answer. “We’re not playing this game to please you, Master Frank.”
Yet though the ranger spoke curtly, though he still tried to hold toward his comrade precisely the same attitude as he had before discovering her sex, he could not put into his words the same peremptory sting that, he had done before when he found that occasionally necessary. For no matter how severely he must seem to deal with her to avoid her own suspicions as to what he knew, as well as to keep from arousing those of others, his heart was telling a very different story all the time. He could see again the dainty grace with which she had danced for him, heard again that low voice breaking into a merry piping lilt, warmed once more to the living, elusive smile, at once so tender and mocking. He might set his will to preserve an even front to her gay charm, but it was beyond him to control the thrills that shot his pulses.
CHAPTER VIII.
FIRST BLOOD!
Occasionally Alice Mackenzie met Collins on the streets of Tucson. Once she saw him at the hotel where she was staying, deep in a discussion with her father of ways and means of running down the robbers of the Limited. He did not, however, make the least attempt to push their train acquaintanceship beyond the give and take of casual greeting. Without showing himself unfriendly, he gave her no opportunity to determine how far they would go with each other. This rather piqued her, though she would probably have rebuffed him if he had presumed far. Of which probability Val Collins was very well aware.
They met one morning in front of a drug store downtown. She carried a parasol that was lilac-trimmed, which shade was also the outstanding note of her dress. She was looking her very best, and no doubt knew it. To Val her dainty freshness seemed to breathe the sweetness of spring violets.
“Good morning, Miss Mackenzie. Weather like this I’m awful glad I ain’t a mummy,” he told her. “The world’s mighty full of beautiful things this glad day.”
“Essay on the Appreciation of Nature, by Professor Collins,” she smiled.