"h.e.l.lo, Arlie! I been looking for you everywhere."
The Texan"s gaze took in a slim dark man, goodlooking after a fashion, but with dissipation written on the rather sullen face.
"Well, you"ve found me," the girl answered coolly.
"Yes, I"ve found you," the man answered, with a steady, watchful eye on the Texan.
Miss Dillon was embarra.s.sed at this plain hostility, but indignation too sparkled in her eye. "Anything in particular you want?"
The newcomer ignored her question. His hard gaze challenged the Southerner; did more than challenge--weighed and condemned.
But this young woman was not used to being ignored. Her voice took on an edge of sharpness.
"What can I do for you, Jed?"
"Who"s your friend?" the man demanded bluntly, insolently.
Arlie"s flush showed the swift, upblazing resentment she immediately controlled. "Mr. Fraser--just arrived from Texas. Mr. Fraser, let me introduce to you Mr. Briscoe."
The Texan stepped forward to offer his hand, but Briscoe deliberately put both of his behind him.
"Might I ask what Mr. Fraser, just arrived from Texas, is doing here?"
the young man drawled, contriving to make an insult of every syllable.
The girl"s eyes flashed dangerously. "He is here as my guest."
"Oh, as your guest!"
"Doesn"t it please you, Jed?"
"Have I said it didn"t please me?" he retorted smoothly.
"Your looks say it."
He let out a sudden furious oath. "Then my looks don"t lie any."
Fraser was stepping forward, but with a gesture Arlie held him back.
This was her battle, not his.
"What have you got to say about it?" she demanded.
"You had no right to bring him here. Who is he anyhow?"
"I think that is his business, and mine."
"I make it mine," he declared hotly. "I"ve heard about this fellow from your father. You met up with him on the trail. He says his name is Fraser. You don"t even know whether that is true. He may be a spy. How do you know he ain"t?"
"How do I know you aren"t?" she countered swiftly.
"You"ve known me all my life. Did you ever see him before?"
"Never."
"Well, then!"
"He risked his life to save ours."
"Risked nothing! It was a trick, I tell you."
"It makes no difference to me what you tell me. Your opinion can"t affect mine."
"You know the feeling of the valley just now about strangers," said Briscoe sullenly.
"It depends on who the stranger is."
"Well, I object to this one."
"So it seems; but I don"t know any law that makes me do whatever you want me to." Her voice, low and clear, cut like a whiplash.
Beneath the dust of travel the young man"s face burned with anger.
"We"re not discussing that just now. What I say is that you had no right to bring him here--not now, especially. You know why," he added, almost in a whisper.
"If you had waited and not attempted to brow-beat me, I would have shown you that that is the very reason I had to bring him."
"How do you mean?"
"Never mind what I mean. You have insulted my friend, and through him, me. That is enough for one day." She turned from him haughtily and spoke to the Texan. "If you are ready, Mr. Fraser, we"ll be going now."
The ranger, whose fingers had been itching to get at the throat of this insolent young man, turned without a word and obediently brought the girl"s pony, then helped her to mount. Briscoe glared, in a silent tempest of pa.s.sion.
"I think I have left a glove and my anemones where we were sitting," the girl said sweetly to the Texan.
Fraser found them, tightened the saddle girth, and mounted Teddy. As they cantered away, Arlie called to him to look at the sunset behind the mountains.
From the moment of her dismissal of Briscoe the girl had apparently put him out of her thoughts. No fine lady of the courts could have done it with more disdainful ease. And the Texan, following her lead, played his part in the little comedy, ignoring the other man as completely as she did.
The young cattleman, furious, his teeth set in impotent rage, watched it all with the l.u.s.t to kill in his heart. When they had gone, he flung himself into the saddle and rode away in a tumultuous fury.
Before they had covered two hundred yards Arlie turned to her companion, all contrition. "There! I"ve done it again. My fits of pa.s.sion are always getting me into trouble. This time one of them has given you an enemy, and a bad one, too."
"No. He would have been my enemy no matter what you said. Soon as he put his eyes on me, I knew it."
"Because I brought you here, you mean?"
"I don"t mean only that. Some folks are born to be enemies, just as some are born to be friends. They"ve only got to look in each other"s eyes once to know it."
"That"s strange. I never heard anybody else say that. Do you really mean it?"