own six-shooter, he
seemed oblivious of any such necessity. With the first glimpse of her
face, when he saw the violet flame of her anger go ruddy with surprise
and relief, then fluid and sparkling as a culminating change of emotion,
he felt cheap for having asked himself the question--which now seemed so
superficial--whether she were good-looking or not. She was, undoubtedly,
yes, undoubtedly good-looking in a way of her own.

"What business is it of yours?" demanded the man, evidently under the
impression that he was due to say something, while his fingers still
rested on his holster.

"None at all, unless she says so," the deliverer answered. "Is it?" he
asked her.

After her first glance at him she had lowered her lashes. Now she raised
them, sending a direct message beside which her first glance had been
dumb indifference. He was seeing into the depths of her eyes in the
consciousness of a privilege rarely bestowed. They gave wing to a
thousand inquiries. He had the thrill of an explorer who is about to
enter on a voyage of discovery. Then the veil was drawn before his ship
had even put out from port. It was a veil woven with fine threads of
appreciative and conventional gratitude.

"It is!" she said decisively.

"I'll be going," said the persecutor, with a grimace that seemed mixed
partly of inherent bravado and partly of shame, as his pulse slowed down
to normal.

"As you please," answered that easy traveller. "I had no mind to exert
any positive directions over your movements."

His politeness, his disinterestedness, and his evident disinclination to
any kind of vehemence carried an implication more exasperating than an
open challenge. They changed melodrama into comedy. They made his
protagonist appear a negligible quantity.

"There's some things I don't do when women are around," the persecutor
returned, grudgingly, and went for his horse; while oppressive silence
prevailed. The easy traveller was not looking at the girl or she at him.
He was regarding the other man idly, curiously, though not contemptuously
as he mounted and started down the trail toward the valley, only to draw
rein as he looked back over his shoulder with a glare which took the easy
traveller in from head to foot.

"Huh! You near-silk dude!" he said chokingly, in his rancor which had
grown with the few minutes he had had for self-communion.

"If you mean my shirt, it was sold to me for pure silk," the easy
traveller returned, i