"Surely you won't ride away without giving me a chance to thank you!" exclaimed McCloud. Dicksie checked her horse. "I owe you a double debt of gratitude," he added, "and I am anxious to assure you that we desire nothing that will injure your interests in any way in crossing your lands."
"I know nothing about those matters, because my cousin manages everything. It is growing late and you have a good way to go, so good-night."
"But you will allow me to ride back to the house with you?"
"It will soon be dark and you are alone."
"No, no! I am quite safe and I have only a short ride. It is you who have far to go," and she spoke again to Jim, who started briskly.
"Miss Dunning, won't you listen just a moment? Please don't run away!" McCloud was trying to come up with her. "Won't you hear me a moment? I have suffered some little humiliation to-day; I should really rather be shot up than have more put on me. I am a man and you are a woman, and it is already dark. Isn't it for me to see you safely to the house? Won't you at least pretend I can act as an escort and let me go with you? I should make a poor figure trying to catch you on horseback----"
Dicksie nodded naïvely. "With that horse."
"With any horse--I know that," said McCloud, keeping at her side.
"But I _can't_ let you ride back with me," declared Dicksie, urging Jim and looking directly at McCloud for the first time. "How could I explain?"
"Let me explain. I am famous for explaining," urged McCloud, spurring too.
"And will you tell me what _I_ should be doing while you were explaining?" she asked.
"Perhaps getting ready a first aid for the injured."
"I feel as if I ought to run away," declared Dicksie, since she had clearly decided not to. "It will have to be a compromise, I suppose. You must not ride farther than the first gate, and let us take this trail instead of the road. Now make your horse go as fast as you can and I'll keep up."
But McCloud's horse, though not a wonder, went too fast to suit his rider, who divided his efforts between checking him and keeping up the conversation. When McCloud dismounted to open Dicksie's gate, and stood in the twilight with his hat in his hand and his bridle over his arm, he was telling a story about Marion Sinclair, and Dicksie in the saddle, tapping her knee with her bridle-rein, was looking down and past him as if the light upon his face were too bright. Before she would start away she made him remount, and he said good-by only after half a promise from her that she would show him sometime a trail to the top of Bridger's Peak, with a view of the Peace River on the east and the whole Mission Range and the park country on the north. Then she rode away at an amazing run, nodding back as he sat still holding his hat above his head.