Frontier Stories | Page 4

In that flash of
perception he saw that it was small, bare, and deeply freckled. In an
instant he grasped it firmly, and rose to his feet, dragging to his own
level as he did so, the struggling figure of a young girl.
"Leave me go!" she said, more ashamed than frightened.
Lance looked at her. She was scarcely more than fifteen, slight and
lithe, with a boyish flatness of breast and back. Her flushed face and

bare throat were absolutely peppered with minute brown freckles, like
grains of spent gunpowder. Her eyes, which were large and gray,
presented the singular spectacle of being also freckled,--at least they
were shot through in pupil and cornea with tiny spots like powdered
allspice. Her hair was even more remarkable in its tawny deer-skin
color, full of lighter shades, and bleached to the faintest of blondes on
the crown of her head, as if by the action of the sun. She had evidently
outgrown her dress, which was made for a smaller child, and the too
brief skirt disclosed a bare, freckled, and sandy desert of shapely limb,
for which the darned stockings were equally too scant. Lance let his
grasp slip from her thin wrist to her hand, and then with a
good-humored gesture tossed it lightly back to her.
She did not retreat, but continued looking at him in a half-surly
embarrassment.
"I ain't a bit frightened," she said; "I'm not going to run away,--don't
you fear."
"Glad to hear it," said Lance, with unmistakable satisfaction, "but why
did you go for my revolver?"
She flushed again and was silent. Presently she began to kick the earth
at the roots of the tree, and said, as if confidentially to her foot:
"I wanted to get hold of it before you did."
"You did?--and why?"
"Oh, you know why."
Every tooth in Lance's head showed that he did, perfectly. But he was
discreetly silent.
"I didn't know what you were hiding there for," she went on, still
addressing the tree, "and," looking at him sideways under her white
lashes, "I didn't see your face."

This subtle compliment was the first suggestion of her artful sex. It
actually sent the blood into the careless rascal's face, and for a moment
confused him. He coughed. "So you thought you'd freeze on to that
six-shooter of mine until you saw my hand?"
She nodded. Then she picked up a broken hazel branch, fitted it into the
small of her back, threw her tanned bare arms over the ends of it, and
expanded her chest and her biceps at the same moment. This simple
action was supposed to convey an impression at once of ease and
muscular force.
"Perhaps you'd like to take it now," said Lance, handing her the pistol.
"I've seen six-shooters before now," said the girl, evading the proffered
weapon and its suggestion. "Dad has one, and my brother had two
derringers before he was half as big as me."
She stopped to observe in her companion the effect of this capacity of
her family to bear arms. Lance only regarded her amusedly. Presently
she again spoke abruptly:
"What made you eat that grass, just now?"
"Grass!" echoed Lance.
"Yes, there," pointing to the yerba buena.
Lance laughed. "I was hungry. Look!" he said, gayly tossing some
silver into the air. "Do you think you could get me some breakfast for
that, and have enough left to buy something for yourself?"
The girl eyed the money and the man with half-bashful curiosity.
"I reckon Dad might give ye suthing if he had a mind ter, though ez a
rule he's down on tramps ever since they run off his chickens. Ye might
try."
"But I want you to try. You can bring it to me here."

The girl retreated a step, dropped her eyes, and, with a smile that was a
charming hesitation between bashfulness and impudence, said: "So you
are hidin', are ye?"
"That's just it. Your head's level. I am," laughed Lance unconcernedly.
"Yur ain't one o' the McCarthy gang--are ye?"
Mr. Lance Harriott felt a momentary moral exaltation in declaring
truthfully that he was not one of a notorious band of mountain
freebooters known in the district under that name.
"Nor ye ain't one of them chicken lifters that raided Henderson's ranch?
We don't go much on that kind o' cattle yer."
"No," said Lance, cheerfully.
"Nor ye ain't that chap ez beat his wife unto death at Santa Clara?"
Lance honestly scorned the imputation. Such conjugal ill treatment as
he had indulged in had not been physical, and had been with other
men's wives.
There was a moment's further hesitation on the part of the girl. Then
she said shortly:
"Well, then, I reckon you kin come along with me."
"Where?" asked