“Who are you?” he demanded, brusquely.
“Your target,” she answered, quietly. “Would you like to take another shot at me?”
The freckled lad broke out into a gurgle of laughter, at which the black, swarthy man beside him wheeled round in a rage. “What you cacklin’ at, Mac?” he demanded, in a low voice.
“Oh, the things I notice,” returned that youth jauntily, meeting the other’s anger without the flicker of an eyelid.
“It ain’t healthy to be so noticin’,” insinuated the other.
“Y’u don’t say,” came the prompt, sarcastic retort. “If you’re such a darned good judge of health, y’u better be attending to some of your patients.” He jerked a casual thumb over his shoulder toward the bunks on which lay the wounded men.
“I shouldn’t wonder but what there might be another patient for me to attend to,” snarled the foreman.
“That so? Well, turn your wolf loose when y’u get to feelin’ real devilish,” jeered the undismayed one, strolling forward to assist Miss Messiter to alight.
The mistress of the Lazy D had been aware of the byplay, but she had caught neither the words nor their import. She took the offered brown hand smilingly, for here again she looked into the frank eyes of the West, unafraid and steady. She judged him not more than twenty-two, but the school where he had learned of life had held open and strenuous session every day since he could remember.
“Glad to meet y’u, ma’am,” he assured her, in the current phrase of the semi-arid lands.