"Oh." She leaned again and peered at him, trying to read his face. "You don't WANT me to go in!"
"Yes, I do--but I don't. If you stayed and made coffee, tomorrow you'd be kicking yourself for it, and you'd be blaming me." Which, considering the life he had lived, almost wholly among men, was rather astute of Andy Green.
"Oh." Then she laughed. "You must have some sisters, Mr. Green." She was silent for a minute, looking at him. "You're right," she said quietly then. "I'm always making a fool of myself, just on the impulse of the moment. The girls will be worried about me, as it is. But I don't want you to ride any farther, Mr. Green. What I came to say need not take very long, and I think I can find my way home alone, all right."
"I'll take you home when you're ready to go," said Andy quietly. All at once he had wanted to shield her, to protect her from even so slight an unconventionality as making his coffee for him. He had felt averse to putting her at odds with her conventional self, of inviting unfavorable criticism of himself; dimly, because instinct rather than cold analysis impelled him. What he had told her was the sum total of his formulated ideas.
"Well, I'm ready to go now, since you insist on my being conventional. I did not come West with the expectation of being tied to a book of etiquette, Mr. Green. But I find one can't get away from it after all. Still, living on one's own claim twelve miles from a town is something!"
"That's a whole lot, I should say," Andy assured her politely, and refrained from asking her what she expected to do with that eighty acres of arid land. He turned his tired horse and rode alongside her, prudently waiting for her to give the key.
"I'm not supposed to be away over here, you know," she began when they were near the foot of the bluff up which the trail wound seeking the easiest slopes and avoiding boulders and deep cuts. "I'm supposed to be just out riding, and the girls expected me back by sundown. But I've been trying and trying to find some of you Flying U boys--as they call you men who have taken so much land--on your claims. I don't know that what I could tell you would do you a particle of good--or anyone else. But I wanted to tell you, anyway, just to clear my own mind."
"It does lots of good just to meet you," said Andy with straightforward gallantry. "Pleasures are few and far between, out here."
"You said that very nicely, I'm sure," she snubbed. "Well, I'm going to tell you, anyway--just on the chance of doing some good." Then she stopped.
Andy rode a rod or two, glancing at her inquiringly, waiting for her to go on. She was guiding her horse awkwardly where it needed only to be let alone, and he wanted to give her a lesson in riding. But it seemed too early in their acquaintance for that, so he waited another minute.
"Miss Hallman is going to make you a lot of trouble," she began abruptly. "I thought perhaps it might be better for you--all of you--if you knew it in advance, so there would be no sudden anger and excitement. All the settlers are antagonistic, Mr. Green--all but me, and one or two of the girls. They are going to do everything they can to prevent your land-scheme from going through. You are going to be watched and--and your land contested--"
"Well, we'll be right there, I guess, when the dust settles," he filled in her thought unmoved.
"I--almost hope so," she ventured. "For my part, I can see the side--your side. I can see where it is very hard for the cattle men to give up their range. It is like the big plantations down south, when the slaves were freed. It had to be done, and yet it was hard upon those planters who depended on free labor. They resented it deeply; deeply enough to shed blood--and that is one thing I dread here. I hope, Mr. Green, that you will not resort to violence. I want to urge you all to--to--"
