Pipped as he was by the pullet's pulchritude (his own expression--he admitted as much to Jackson offhand) the cool-headed if hot-blooded Allen evidently decided to ride a waiting race for at least the first half or three-quarters, and so have something to draw on for the straightaway. "Easy starter but a hell of a finisher," was the popular appraisal of "Slant's" way of winning with a horse, and it was but natural that he should pin his faith to similar tactics where a woman was in the running. There's a lot in common between the two, and it is rarely indeed that a man who has a way with the one comes a cropper with the other.
It has occurred to me, too, that a very wholesome respect for Bell as a man may have had a good deal to do with Allen's failure to force the running at the start in the matter of Rona. The steel of his own hard purposefulness could not have but struck sparks on the flint beneath the American's mask of suave reserve at their first meeting, and the Australian was far too intelligent not to sense that in Bell's Jovian spirit there was a force more compelling than anything in his own. Moreover, at riding, fighting and shooting--all that carried much weight when they judged a man in the Islands--Allen must have known that if the balance inclined either way, it was in the American's favour.
It may well have been the sheer rugged, manly forcefulness of Bell that gave Allen pause, at least in those early weeks before the Australian's infatuation for the girl became an obsession in which his reason had no part. For years he had been taking life and property out of downright contempt for his victims. "I'm the better man, and therefore the more deserving," was sufficient excuse in his own mind for his most high-handed outrages. But in Bell--for almost the first time perhaps--he had met a man who had an "edge" on him--even his soaring ego could not prevent his recognizing that. This must have been plain to him even when he measured the Yankee with the yardstick of his own primitive code. Yes, I really think that Allen, in his innermost mind, rated Bell as a man who, like himself, had a "right" to the best of everything. I am even convinced that, for a while at least, he even tried to respect Bell's right to Rona.