Mavericks | Page 2

first girl that
ever was kissed."
She glanced quickly at him, recalling stories she had heard of his
boldness with girls. He had taken off his hat and the golden locks of the
boy gleamed in the sunlight. Handsome he surely was, though a critic
might have found weakness in the lower part of the face. Chin and
mouth lacked firmness.
"So I've been told," she answered tartly.
"Jealous?"
"No," she exploded.
Slipping to the ground, he trailed his rein.
"You don't need to depend on hearing," he said, moving toward her.
"What do you mean?" she flared.
"You remember well enough--at the social down to Peterson's."
"We were children then--or I was."
"And you're not a kid now?"
"No, I'm not."
"Here's congratulations, Miss Sanderson. You've put away childish
things and now you have become a woman."

Angrily the girl struck down his outstretched hand.
"After this, if a fellow should kiss you, it would be a crime, wouldn't
it?" he bantered.
"Don't you dare try it, Tom Dixon," she flashed fiercely.
Hitherto he had usually thought of her as a school girl, even though she
was teaching in the Willow's district. Now it came to him with what
dignity and unconscious pride her head was poised, how little the
home-made print could conceal the long, free lines of her figure, still
slender with the immaturity of youth. Soon now the woman in her
would awaken and would blossom abundantly as the spring poppies
were doing on the mountain side. Her sullen sweetness was very close
to him. The rapid rise and fall of her bosom, the underlying flush in her
dusky cheeks, the childish pout of the full lips, all joined in the
challenge of her words. Mostly it was pure boyishness, the impish
desire to tease, that struck the audacious sparkle to his eyes, but there
was, too, a masculine impulse he did not analyse.
"So you won't be friends?"
If he had gone about it the right way he might have found forgiveness
easily enough. But this did not happen to be the right way.
"No, I won't." And she gave him her profile again.
"Then we might as well have something worth while to quarrel about,"
he said, and slipping his arm round her neck, he tilted her face toward
him.
With a low cry she twisted free, pushing him from her.
Beneath the fierce glow of her eyes his laughter was dashed. He forgot
his expected trivial triumph, for they flashed at him now no childish
petulance, but the scorn of a woman, a scorn in the heat of which his
vanity withered and the thing he had tried to do stood forth a bare
insult.

"How dare you!" she gasped.
Straight up the stairs to her room she ran, turned the lock, and threw
herself passionately on the bed. She hated him...hated him...hated him.
Over and over again she told herself this, crying it into the pillows
where she had hidden her hot cheeks. She would make him pay for this
insult some day. She would find a way to trample on him, to make him
eat dirt for this. Of course she would never speak to him again--never
so long as she lived. He had insulted her grossly. Her turbulent
Southern blood boiled with wrath. It was characteristic of the girl that
she did not once think of taking her grievance to her hot-headed father
or to her brother. She could pay her own debts without involving them.
And it was in character, too, that she did not let the inner tumult
interfere with her external duties.
As soon as she heard the stage breasting the hill, she was up from the
bed as swift as a panther and at her dressing-table dabbing with a
kerchief at the telltale eyes and cheeks. Before the passengers began
streaming into the house for dinner she was her competent self, had
already cast a supervising eye over Becky the cook and Manuel the
waiter, to see that everything was in readiness, and behind the official
cage had fallen to arranging the mail that had just come up from
Noches on the stage.
From this point of vantage she could cast an occasional look into the
dining-room to see that all was going well there. Once, glancing
through the window, she saw Tom Dixon in conversation with a
half-grown youngster in leathers, gauntlets, and spurs. A coin was
changing hands from the older boy to the younger, and as soon as the
delivery window was raised little Bud Tryon shuffled in to get the
family mail and that of Tom. Also he pushed through the opening a
folded paper evidently torn from a notebook.
"This here is for you, Phyl," he explained.
She pushed it back. "I'm too