She had touched his vanity. As he walked beside her she could almost see his complacency purr.
“I’m a miscreant, I reckon, but I was a gentleman first.”
Fortunately he did not see the flash of veiled scorn she shot at him under her long lashes.
With her breakfast next morning the Cheyenne woman brought a note signed “Shepherd-of-the-Desert.” In it Bannister asked permission to pay his respects. The girl divined that he was in his better mood, and penciled on his note the favor she could scarce refuse.
But she was scarcely prepared for the impudent air of jocund spring he brought into her prison, the gay assumption of camaraderie so inconsistent with the facts. Yet since safety lay in an avoidance of the tragic, she set herself to match his mood.
At sight of the open Tennyson on the table he laughed and quoted:
She only said, “The day is dreary.”
“He cometh not,” she said.
“But, you see, he comes,” he added. “What say, Mariana of the Robbers’ Roost, to making a picnic day of it? We’ll climb the Crags and lunch on the summit.”
“The Crags?”
“That Matterhorn-shaped peak that begins at our back door. Are you for it?”