Jean had doffed his sombrero at sight of her and he still held it, rather deferentially, perhaps. It seemed to attract her attention.
"Put on y'ur hat, stranger. . . . Shore I can't recollect when any man bared his haid to me. "She uttered a little laugh in which surprise and frankness mingled with a tint of bitterness.
Jean sat down with his back to a pine, and, laying the sombrero by his side, he looked full at her, conscious of a singular eagerness, as if he wanted to verify by close scrutiny a first hasty impression.
If there had been an instinct in his meeting with Colter, there was more in this. The girl half sat, half leaned against a log, with the shiny little carbine across her knees. She had a level, curious gaze upon him, and Jean had never met one just like it. Her eyes were rather a wide oval in shape, clear and steady, with shadows of thought in their amber-brown depths. They seemed to look through Jean, and his gaze dropped first. Then it was he saw her ragged homespun skirt and a few inches of brown, bare ankles, strong and round, and crude worn-out moccasins that failed to hide the shapeliness, of her feet.
Suddenly she drew back her stockingless ankles and ill-shod little feet.
When Jean lifted his gaze again he found her face half averted and a stain of red in the gold tan of her cheek. That touch of embarrassment somehow removed her from this strong, raw, wild woodland setting. It changed her poise. It detracted from the curious, unabashed, almost bold, look that he had encountered in her eyes.
"Reckon you're from Texas," said Jean, presently.
"Shore am," she drawled. She had a lazy Southern voice, pleasant to hear. "How'd y'u-all guess that?"
"Anybody can tell a Texan. Where I came from there were a good many pioneers an' ranchers from the old Lone Star state. I've worked for several. An', come to think of it, I'd rather hear a Texas girl talk than anybody."
"Did y'u know many Texas girls?" she inquired, turning again to face him.
"Reckon I did--quite a good many."
"Did y'u go with them?"
"Go with them? Reckon you mean keep company. Why, yes, I guess I did--a little," laughed Jean. "Sometimes on a Sunday or a dance once in a blue moon, an' occasionally a ride. "
"Shore that accounts," said the girl, wistfully.
"For what? " asked Jean.
"Y'ur bein' a gentleman," she replied, with force. Oh, I've not forgotten. I had friends when we lived in Texas. . . . Three years ago. Shore it seems longer. Three miserable years in this damned country!"
Then she bit her lip, evidently to keep back further unwitting utterance to a total stranger. And it was that biting of her lip that drew Jean's attention to her mouth. It held beauty of curve and fullness and color that could not hide a certain sadness and bitterness. Then the whole flashing brown face changed for Jean.
He saw that it was young, full of passion and restraint, possessing a power which grew on him. This, with her shame and pathos and the fact that she craved respect, gave a leap to Jean's interest.
"Well, I reckon you flatter me," he said, hoping to put her at her ease again. "I'm only a rough hunter an' fisherman-woodchopper an' horse tracker. Never had all the school I needed--nor near enough company of nice girls like you."
"Am I nice?" she asked, quickly.
"You sure are," he replied, smiling.
"In these rags," she demanded, with a sudden flash of passion that thrilled him. "Look at the holes." She showed rips and worn-out places in the sleeves of her buckskin blouse, through which gleamed a round, brown arm. "I sew when I have anythin' to sew with. . . .
Look at my skirt--a dirty rag. An' I have only one other to my name.
. . . Look!" Again a color tinged her cheeks, most becoming, and giving the lie to her action. But shame could not check her violence now. A dammed-up resentment seemed to have broken out in flood. She lifted the ragged skirt almost to her knees. "No stockings! No Shoes!
. . . How can a girl be nice when she has no clean, decent woman's clothes to wear?"
"How--how can a girl. . ." began Jean. "See here, miss, I'm beggin' your pardon for--sort of stirrin' you to forget yourself a little.
Reckon I understand. You don't meet many strangers an' I sort of hit you wrong--makin' you feel too much--an' talk too much. Who an' what you are is none of my business. But we met. . . . An' I reckon somethin' has happened--perhaps more to me than to you. . . . Now let me put you straight about clothes an' women. Reckon I know most women love nice things to wear an' think because clothes make them look pretty that they're nicer or better. But they're wrong. You're wrong. Maybe it 'd be too much for a girl like you to be happy without clothes. But you can be--you axe just as nice, an'--an' fine--an', for all you know, a good deal more appealin' to some men."
"Stranger, y'u shore must excuse my temper an' the show I made of myself," replied the girl, with composure. "That, to say the least, was not nice. An' I don't want anyone thinkin' better of me than I deserve. My mother died in Texas, an' I've lived out heah in this wild country--a girl alone among rough men. Meetin' y'u to-day makes me see what a hard lot they are--an' what it's done to me."
Jean smothered his curiosity and tried to put out of his mind a growing sense that he pitied her, liked her.
"Are you a sheep herder?" he asked.
" Shore I am now an' then. My father lives back heah in a canyon.
He's a sheepman. Lately there's been herders shot at. Just now we're short an' I have to fill in. But I like shepherdin' an' I love the woods, and the Rim Rock an' all the Tonto. If they were all, I'd shore be happy."
"Herders shot at!" exclaimed Jean, thoughtfully. "By whom?
An' what for?"
"Trouble brewin' between the cattlemen down in the Basin an' the sheepmen up on the Rim. Dad says there'll shore be hell to pay.
I tell him I hope the cattlemen chase him back to Texas."
"Then-- Are you on the ranchers' side? " queried Jean, trying to pretend casual interest.
"No. I'll always be on my father's side," she replied, with spirit.
