He held up as a trophy of his prowess two cottontails. "Who says I can't shoot?" he wanted to know boisterously.
"Where did you buy them?" she scoffed, faintly trying for sauciness.
"That's a fine reward for honest virtue, after I tramped five miles to get them for your supper," protested Keller.
She recovered her composure quickly, as women will.
"If they are for my supper, we'll have to ask him to ride home with us—won't we, Jimmie? It would never do to have them reach the ranch too late," she said, making room for Keller in the seat beside her.
It was after she had driven several hundred yards that he said, with a smile: "I met a young man on horseback as I was coming up. He went by me like a streak of light. Looked like he found this a right mournful world. You had ought to scatter sunshine and not gloom, Miss Phyllis."
"Am I scattering gloom?" she asked demurely.
"Not right now," he laughed. "But looks like you have been."
She flicked a fly from the flank of her horse before she answered: "Some people are so noticing."
"It was hanging right heavy on him. Had the look of a man who had lost his last friend," the young man observed meditatively.