Bob Hampton of Placer | Page 7

you," and there was a look of positive dislike in her
widely opened eyes.
"Did n't want me?" He echoed these unexpected words in a tone of
complete surprise. "Surely you could not desire to be left here alone?
Why didn't you want me?"
"Because I know who you are!" Her voice seemed to catch in her throat.
"He told me. You're the man who shot Jim Eberly."
Mr. Hampton was never of a pronounced emotional nature, nor was he
a person easily disconcerted, yet he flushed at the sound of these
impulsive words, and the confident smile deserted his lips. For a
moment they sat thus, the dead body lying between, and looked at each
other. When the man finally broke the constrained silence a deeper
intonation had crept into his voice.
"My girl," he said gravely, and not without a suspicion of pleading,
"this is no place for me to attempt any defence of a shooting affray in a
gambling-house, although I might plead with some justice that Eberly
enjoyed the honor of shooting first. I was not aware of your personal
feeling in the matter, or I might have permitted some one else to come
here in my stead. Now it is too late. I have never spoken to you before,
and do so at this time merely from a sincere desire to be of some
assistance."
There was that in his manner of grave courtesy which served to steady
the girl. Probably never before in all her rough frontier experience had
she been addressed thus formally. Her closely compressed lips twitched
nervously, but her questioning eyes remained unlowered.

"You may stay," she asserted, soberly. "Only don't touch me."
No one could ever realize how much those words hurt him. He had
been disciplined in far too severe a school ever to permit his face to
index the feelings of his heart, yet the unconcealed shrinking of this
uncouth child from slightest personal contact with him cut through his
acquired reserve as perhaps nothing else could ever have done. Not
until he had completely conquered his first unwise impulse to retort
angrily, did he venture again to speak.
"I hope to aid you in getting back beside the others, where you will be
less exposed."
"Will you take him?"
"He is dead," Hampton said, soberly, "and I can do nothing to aid him.
But there remains a chance for you to escape."
"Then I won't go," she declared, positively.
Hampton's gray eyes looked for a long moment fixedly into her darker
ones, while the two took mental stock of each other. He realized the
utter futility of any further argument, while she felt instinctively the
cool, dominating strength of the man. Neither was composed of that
poor fibre which bends.
"Very well, my young lady," he said, easily, stretching himself out
more comfortably in the rock shadow. "Then I will remain here with
you; it makes small odds."
Excepting for one hasty, puzzled glance, she did not deign to look
again toward him, and the man rested motionless upon his back, staring
up at the sky. Finally, curiosity overmastered the actor in him, and he
turned partially upon one side, so as to bring her profile within his
range of vision. The untamed, rebellious nature of the girl had touched
a responsive chord; unseeking any such result she had directly appealed
to his better judgment, and enabled him to perceive her from an entirely
fresh view-point. Her clearly expressed disdain, her sturdy

independence both of word and action, coupled with her frankly voiced
dislike, awoke within him an earnest desire to stand higher in her
regard. Her dark, glowing eyes were lowered upon the white face of the
dead man, yet Hampton noted how clear, in spite of sun-tan, were those
tints of health upon the rounded cheek, and how soft and glossy shone
her wealth of rumpled hair. Even the tinge of color, so distasteful in the
full glare of the sun, appeared to have darkened under the shadow, its
shade framing the downcast face into a pensive fairness. Then he
observed how dry and parched her lips were.
"Take a drink of this," he insisted heartily, holding out toward her as he
spoke his partially filled canteen.
She started at the unexpected sound of his voice, yet uplifted the
welcome water to her mouth, while Hampton, observing it all closely,
could but remark the delicate shapeliness other hand.
"If that old fellow was her father," he reflected soberly, "I should like
to have seen her mother."
"Thank you," she said simply, handing back the canteen, but without
lifting her eyes again to his face. "I was so thirsty." Her low tone,
endeavoring to be polite enough, contained no note of encouragement.
"Was Gillis your father?" the man