"You
don't say I do it well," she charged, aware suspiciously, at
last, of his grave silence.
"You do it very well indeed. I didn't think you had it in you,
kid. What's worrying me is that I can never live up to such a
sure enough gipsy as you."
"All you have to do is to look sour and frown if anybody gets too
familiar with me. You can do that, can't you?"
"You bet I can," he answered promptly, with unnecessary emphasis.
"And look handsome," she teased.
"Oh, that will be easy for me--since you are going to make me up.
As a simple child of nature I'm no ornament to the scenery, but
art's a heap improving sometimes."
She thought, but did not say, that art would go a long way before
it could show anything more pleasing than this rider of the
plains. It was not alone his face, with the likable blue eyes
that could say so many things in a minute, but the gallant ease
of his bearing. Such a springy lightness, such sinewy grace of
undulating muscle, were rare even on the frontier. She had once
heard Webb Mackenzie say of him that he could whip his weight in
wildcats, and it was easy of belief after seeing how surely he
was master of the dynamic power in him.
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