ck, young lady! However, I believe we might
become good friends if we ever have sufficient luck to get out from
this hole alive. Darn if I don't sort of cotton to you, little
girl--you've got some sand."

For a brief space her truthful, angry eyes rested scornfully upon his
face, her lips parted as though trembling with a sharp retort. Then
she deliberately turned her back upon him without uttering a word.

For what may have been the first and only occasion in Mr. Hampton's
audacious career, he realized his utter helplessness. This mere slip
of a red-headed girl, this little nameless waif of the frontier,
condemned him so completely, and without waste of words, as to leave
him weaponless. Not that he greatly cared; oh, no! still, it was an
entirely new experience; the arrow went deeper than he would have
willingly admitted. Men of middle age, gray hairs already commencing
to shade their temples, are not apt to enjoy being openly despised by
young women, not even by ordinary freckle-faced girls, clad in coarse
short frocks. Yet he could think of no fitting retort worth the
speaking, and consequently he simply lay back, seeking to treat this
disagreeable creature with that silent contempt which is the last
resort of the vanquished.

He was little inclined to admit, even to himself, that he had been
fairly hit, yet the truth remained that this girl was beginning to
interest him oddly. He admired her sturdy independence, her audacity
of speech, her unqualified frankness. Mr. Hampton was a thoroughgoing
sport, and no quality was quite so apt to appeal to him as dead
gameness. He glanced surreptitiously aside at her once more, but there
was no sign of relenting in the averted face. He rested lower against
the rock, his face upturned toward the sky, and thought. He was
becoming vaguely aware that something entirely new, and rather
unwelcome, had crept into his life during that last fateful half-hour.
It could not be analyzed, nor even expressed definitely in words, but
he comprehended this much--he would really enjoy rescuing this girl,
and he should like to live long enough to discover into what sort of
woman she would develop.

It was no spirit of bravado that gave rise to his reckless speech of an
hour previous. It was simply a spontaneous outpouring of his real
nature, an unpremeditated expression of that supreme carelessness with
which he regarded the future, the small value he set on life. He truly
fel