For a mile they rode at a swift gallop, the girl in front not so much
as turning her head to see if he were following, their way leading
along the bank of Indian Creek and through the gloomy half-light which
sifted down through the mesh of branches of the big trees reaching
high overhead. Then she left the road for a narrow trail which wound
through trees and bushes down into the creek-bed and across it, coming
out through the trees upon the dry grass-covered plain to the east.
And now again she rode at a swinging gallop, and he followed her. He
knew that twenty miles ahead of them was Rattlesnake Valley. He began
to wonder if that were where she was going.
Suddenly she jerked in her horse and sat waiting for him. And
Conniston, grown stubbornly determined that if she wanted him she must
call to him, stopped his own horse at a respectful distance behind
her. She turned her head and looked at him wonderingly.
"What is it, Mr. Conniston? What makes you act so strangely? Don't you
want to ride with me?"
He touched his hat with mock solemnity.
"I did not know that you wanted me to. I imagined that the hired man's
place--"
"Oh, nonsense!" she broke in, impatiently. And with a swift smile
which was so faint, so elusive that it was gone before he could be
sure that he had not imagined it, "I thought that you were going--that
we were going to be friends.
Pages:
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130