But Kate groped her dazed way around the table. Physically and mentally, she had been severely shocked. To meet a tornado where one had expected a summer breeze is rather shattering to one's poise. Quite so. Kate suffered. Then, out of the chaos of her emotions, erupted wild anger.
"You! You!" she hissed. "How dare you kiss me! Ugh-h! I could kill you!"
She drew the back of her hand across her mouth and snapped her hand downward with precisely the same snap and jerk that a Mexican bartender employs when he flips the pulque from his fingers.
"Do you know I'm engaged to Sam Blakely? What do you think he'll do when he finds this out? Do you understand? I'm going to marry Sam Blakely!"
This facer cooled Loudon as nothing else could have done. Outwardly, at least, he became calm.
"I didn't understand, but I do now," he said, stooping to recover his hat. "If you'd told me that in the first place it would have saved trouble."
"You'd have been afraid to kiss me then!" she taunted.
"Not afraid," he corrected, gently. "I wouldn't 'a' wanted to. I ain't kissin' another man's girl."
"No, I guess not! The nerve of you! Think I'd marry an ignorant puncher!"
"Yuh shore ain't goin' to marry this one, but yuh are goin' to marry a cow thief!"