"I found your horse rolling," he explained, and his gravity was dogged
in the face of her brightness. "How I knew it was yours I don't know,
but I did just the same. I thought she had thrown you; I'd already
made up my mind, if there was one scratch on your body, to take that
mare's head between my hands and break her neck! You see, I believed I
knew already just what it would mean to me if anything ever happened to
you. But it's a lot different imagining the world without
you--and--and facing the actual possibility of it. Was I--fairly
tragic?"
And now it was his turn to laugh over her pink-faced disconcernment.
Most decidedly it was not the sort of an encounter which she had been
contemplating a moment earlier. There was no discomfort in that big,
loose-limbed body. She had imagined him as just a little moody and
sad-eyed, at least. And now she realized that she had never seen the
latter so easy to read as they were at that minute. Gray as the
shadowed silver thread of the river far below in the valley, they
glowed with a great gladness for her safety, and far, far more than
just that. The alarming cheerfulness of his gaze was too confusing to
sustain.
"Of course you've found Garry," she hastened to swing the conversation
to a less personal quarter. "Is he--will you tell me about it, please?"
One small, gauntleted hand made an almost imperceptible gesture toward
the unoccupied space beside her on the fallen tree.
Pages:
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179