Good Indian laughed at her, a laugh of pure, elemental joy in life and
in love.

"A man's heart does not beat by the calendar. Nature made the heart to
beat with love, ages before man measured time, and prattled of hours and
days and weeks," he retorted. "I'm not the same man I was a week ago.
Nor an hour ago. What does it matter, I am--the man I am NOW." He
looked at her more calmly. "An hour ago," he pointed out, "I didn't
dream I should kiss you. Nor you, that you would let me do it."

"I didn't! I couldn't help myself. You--oh, I never saw such a--a
brute!" The tears in her eyes were, perhaps, tears of rage at the
swiftness with which he had mastered the situation and turned it in a
breath from the safe channel of petty argument. She struck Huckleberry a
blow with her whip which sent that astonished animal galloping down the
slope before them, his ears laid back and his white eyelashes blinking
resentment against the outrage.

Good Indian laughed aloud, spurred Keno into a run, and passed her with
a scurry of dust, a flash of white teeth and laughing black eyes, and a
wave of his free hand in adieu. He was still laughing when he overtook
the others, passed by the main group, and singled out Jack, his
particular chum. He refused to explain either his hurry or his mirth
further than to fling out a vague sentence about a race, and thereafter
he ambled contentedly along beside Jack in the lead, and told how he had
won a hundred and sixty dollars in a crap game the last time he was in
Shoshone, and how he had kept on until he had "quit ten dollars in
the hole." The rest of the boys, catching a few words here and there,
crowded close, and left the two girls to themselves, while Good Indian
recounted in detail the fluctuations of the game; how he had seesawed
for an hour, winning and losing alternately; and how his luck had
changed suddenly just when he had made up his mind to play a five-dollar
gold piece he had in his hand and quit.

"I threw naturals three times in succession," he said, "and let my bets
ride. Then I got Big Dick, made good, and threw another natural. I was
seeing those Spanish spurs and that peach of a headstall in Fernando's
by that time; seeing them on Keno and me--they're in the window yet,
Jack, and I went in when I first hit town and looked them over and
priced them; a hundred and fifty, just about what we guessed he'd
hold them at. And say, those conchos--you remember the size of 'em,
Jack