She was gazing with a good deal of perseverance at the trail, down the windings of which the others could be seen now and then galloping through the dust, so that their progress was marked always by a smothering cloud of gray. Then she looked at Grant unexpectedly, met one of his sharp glances, and flushed hotly again.
"How about this business of hating each other, and not speaking except to please Aunt Phoebe?" he demanded, with a suddenness which startled himself. He had been thinking it, but he hadn't intended to say it until the words spoke themselves. "Are we supposed to keep on acting the fool indefinitely?""I was not aware that I, at least, was acting the fool," she retorted, with a washed-out primness.
"Oh, I can't fight the air, and I'm not going to try. What I've got to say, I prefer to say straight from the shoulder. I'm sick of this standing off and giving each other the bad eye over nothing. If we're going to stay on the same ranch, we might as well be friends. What do you say?"For a time he thought she was not going to say anything. She was staring at the dust-cloud ahead, and chewing absently at the corner of her under lip, and she kept it up so long that Good Indian began to scowl and call himself unseemly names for making any overture whatever. But, just as he turned toward her with lips half opened for a bitter sentence, he saw a dimple appear in the cheek next to him, and held back the words.
"You told me you didn't like me," she reminded, looking at him briefly, and afterward fumbling her reins. "You can't expect a girl--""I suppose you don't remember coming up to me that first night, and calling me names, and telling me how you hated me, and--and winding up by pinching me?" he insinuated with hypocritical reproach, and felt of his arm. "If you could see the mark--" he hinted shamelessly.
Evadna replied by pushing up her sleeve and displaying a scratch at least an inch in length, and still roughened and red. "Isuppose you don't remember trying to MURDER me?" she inquired, sweetly triumphant. "If you could shoot as well as Jack, I'd have been killed very likely. And you'd be in jail this minute,"she added, with virtuous solemnity.
"But you're not killed, and I'm not in jail.""And I haven't told a living soul about it--not even Aunt Phoebe," Evadna remarked, still painfully virtuous. "If I had--""She'd have wondered, maybe, what you were doing away down there in the middle of the night," Good Indian finished. "I didn't tell a soul, either, for that matter."They left the meadowland and the broad stretch of barren sand and sage, and followed, at a leisurely pace, the winding of the trail through the scarred desolation where the earth had been washed for gold. Evadna stared absently at the network of deep gashes, evidently meditating very seriously. Finally she turned to Grant with an honest impulse of friendliness.
"Well, I'm sure I'm willing to bury the tomahawk--er--that is, Imean--" She blushed hotly at the slip, and stammered incoherently.
"Never mind." His eyes laughed at her confusion. "I'm not as bad as all that; it doesn't hurt my feelings to have tomahawks mentioned in my presence."Her cheeks grew redder, if that were possible, but she made no attempt to finish what she had started to say.
Good Indian rode silent, watching her unobtrusively and wishing he knew how to bring the conversation by the most undeviating path to a certain much-desired conclusion. After all, she was not a wild thing, but a human being, and he hesitated. In dealing with men, he had but one method, which was to go straight to the point regardless of consequences. So he half turned in the saddle and rode with one foot free of the stirrup that he might face her squarely.
"You say you're willing to bury the tomahawk; do you mean it?"His eyes sought hers, and when they met her glance held it in spite of her blushes, which indeed puzzled him. But she did not answer immediately, and so he repeated the question.
"Do you mean that? We've been digging into each other pretty industriously, and saying how we hate each other--but are you willing to drop it and be friends? It's for you to say--and you've got to say it now."Evadna hung up her head at that. "Are you in the habit of laying down the law to everyone who will permit it?" she evaded.
"Am I to take it for granted you meant what you said?" He stuck stubbornly to the main issue. "Girls seem to have a way of saying things, whether they mean anything or not. Did you?""Did I what?" She was wide-eyed innocence again.
Good Indian muttered something profane, and kicked his horse in the ribs. When it had taken no more than two leaps forward, however, he pulled it down to a walk again, and his eyes boded ill for the misguided person who goaded him further. He glanced at the girl sharply.
"This thing has got to be settled right now, without any more fooling or beating about the bush," he said--and he said it so quietly that she could scarcely be blamed for not realizing what lay beneath. She was beginning to recover her spirits and her composure, and her whole attitude had become demurely impish.
"Settle it then, why don't you?" she taunted sweetly. "I'm sure I haven't the faintest idea what there is to settle--in that solemn manner. I only know we're a mile behind the others, and Miss Georgie will be wondering--""You say I'm to settle it, the way I want it settled?"If Evadna did not intend anything serious, she certainly was a fool not to read aright his ominously calm tone and his tensely quiet manner. She must have had some experience in coquetry, but it is very likely that she had never met a man just like this one. At all events, she tilted her blonde head, smiled at him daringly, and then made a little grimace meant to signify her defiance of him and his unwarranted earnestness.
