“She can if he gives her a chance, and I think he will. There’s a kind of cat instinct in him to play with his prey.”
“Yes, but he missed his kill last time by letting her fool him. That’s what I’m afraid of’ that he won’t wait.”
They had reached lower ground now, and could put their ponies at a pounding gallop that ate up the trail fast. As they approached the houses, both men drew rein and looked carefully to their weapons. Then they slid from the saddles and slipped noiselessly forward.
What the foreman had said was exactly true. Helen Messiter did want them both, and she wanted them very much indeed.
After supper she had been dreamily playing over to herself one of Chopin’s waltzes, when she became aware, by some instinct, that she was not alone in the room. There had been no least sound, no slightest stir to betray an alien presence. Yet that some one was in the room she knew, and by some subtle sixth sense could even put a name to the intruder.
Without turning she called over her shoulder: “Shall I finish the waltz?” No faintest tremor in the clear, sweet voice betrayed the racing heart.
“Y’u’re a cool hand, my friend,” came his ready answer. “But I think we’ll dispense with the music. I had enough last time to serve me for twice.”
She laughed as she swung on the stool, with that musical scorn which both allured and maddened. “I did rather do you that time,” she allowed.
“This is the return match. You won then. I win now,” he told her, with a look that chilled.
“Indeed! But isn’t that rather discounting the future?”