The young cattleman, furious, his teeth set in impotent rage, watched it all with the lust to kill in his heart. When they had gone, he flung himself into the saddle and rode away in a tumultuous fury.
Before they had covered two hundred yards Arlie turned to her companion, all contrition. "There! I've done it again. My fits of passion are always getting me into trouble. This time one of them has given you an enemy, and a bad one, too."
"No. He would have been my enemy no matter what you said. Soon as he put his eyes on me, I knew it."
"I don't mean only that. Some folks are born to be enemies, just as some are born to be friends. They've only got to look in each other's eyes once to know it."
"That's strange. I never heard anybody else say that. Do you really mean it?"
"And did you ever have such an enemy before? Don't answer me if I oughtn't to ask that," she added quickly.
"Yes. It's ours, and yours as long as you want to stay. Did you feel that you were enemies the moment you saw this man in Texas?"
"I knew we were going to have trouble as soon as we looked at each other. I had no feeling toward him, but he had toward me."
"Some, before I landed him. The way it turned out he had most of it."
She glanced quickly at him. "What do you mean by 'landed'?"
"What are they? Something like our forest rangers?"
"No. The duty of a Texas Ranger is to enforce the law against desperadoes. We prevent crime if we can. When we can't do that, we hunt down the criminals."
Arlie looked at him in a startled silence.
"You are an officer of the law--a sort of sheriff?" she said, at last.
"Yes, in Texas. This is Wyoming." He made his distinction, knowing it was a false one. Somehow he had the feeling of a whipped cur.
"I wish I had known. If you had only told me earlier," she said, so low as to be almost a whisper.
"I'm sorry. If you like, I'll go away again," he offered.
"No, no. I'm only thinking that it gives Jed a hold, gives him something to stir up his friends with, you know. That is, it would if he knew. He mustn't find out."
"Be frank. Don't make any secret of it. That's the best way," he advised.
She shook her head. "You don't know Jed's crowd. They'd be suspicious of any officer, no matter where he came from."