“No, ma’am, I don’t know so many ladies that I’m liable to such an oversight.
“I have heard a different story. But if you do remember to come, and will let us know when you expect to honor the Lazy D, I’ll have messengers sent to meet you.”
He perfectly understood her to mean leaden ones, and the humorous gleam in his eye sparkled in appreciation of her spirit. “I don’t want all that fuss made over me. I reckon I’ll drop in unexpected,” he said.
She nodded curtly. “Good-bye. Hope your ankle won’t trouble you very much.”
“Thank y’u, ma’am. I reckon it won’t. Good-bye, Miss Messiter.”
Out of the tail of her eye she saw him bowing like an Italian opera singer, as impudently insouciant, as gracefully graceless as any stage villain in her memory. Once again she saw him, when her machine swept round a curve and she could look back without seeming to do so, limping across through the sage brush toward a little hillock near the road. And as she looked the bare, curly head was inclined toward her in another low, mocking bow. He was certainly the gallantest vagabond unhanged.
CHAPTER IV.
AT THE LAZY D RANCH
Helen Messiter was a young woman very much alive, which implies that she was given to emotions; and as her machine skimmed over the ground to the Lazy D she had them to spare. For from the first this young man had taken her eye, and it had come upon her with a distinct shock that he was the notorious scoundrel who was terrorizing the countryside. She told herself almost passionately that she would never have believed it if he had not said so himself. She knew quite well that the coldness that had clutched her heart when he gave his name had had nothing to do with fear. There had been chagrin, disappointment, but nothing in the least like the terror she might have expected. The simple truth was that he had seemed so much a man that it had hurt her to find him also a wild beast.
Deep in her heart she resented the conviction forced upon her. Reckless he undoubtedly was, at odds with the law surely, but it was hard to admit that attractive personality to be the mask of fiendish cruelty and sinister malice. And yet—the facts spoke for themselves. He had not even attempted a denial. Still there was a mystery about him, else how was it possible for two so distinct personalities to dwell together in the same body.
She hated him with all her lusty young will; not only for what he was, but also for what she had been disappointed in not finding him after her first instinctive liking. Yet it was with an odd little thrill that she ran down again into the coulée where her prosaic life had found its first real adventure. He might be all they said, but nothing could wipe out the facts that she had offered her life to save his, and that he had lent her his body as a living shield for one exhilarating moment of danger.