She tilted her head back, so that the light gleamed on her young throat, and she broke into laughter.

“Why, Jack, that’s foolish.  You proved yourself when you first came to The Corner.  Maybe some of the newcomers may have said something, but all the old-timers know you had some different reason for leaving the rest of them.  By the way, what was the reason?”

She sent a keen little glance at him from the corner of her eyes, but the moment she saw that he was embarrassed and at sea because of the query she instantly slipped into a fresh tide of careless chatter and covered up his confusion for him.

“See how the girls are making eyes at him.”

“I’ll tell you why,” Jack replied.  “A girl likes to be with the man who’s making the town talk.”  He added pointedly:  “Oh, I’ve found that out!”

She shrugged that comment away.

“He isn’t paying the slightest attention to any of them,” she murmured.  “He’s queer!  Has he just come here hunting trouble?”

20

It should be understood that before this the men in Milligan’s had reached a subtly unspoken agreement that red-haired Donnegan was not one of them.  In a word, they did not like him because he made a mystery of himself.  And, also, because he was different.  Yet there was a growing feeling that the shooting of Lewis through the hand had not been an accident, for the whole demeanor of Donnegan composed the action of a man who is a professional trouble maker.  There was no reason why he should go to Milligan’s and take his servant with him unless he wished a fight.  And why a man should wish to fight the entire Corner was something no one could guess.

That he should have done all this merely to focus all eyes upon him, and particularly the eyes of a girl, did not occur to anyone.  It looked rather like the bravado of a man who lived for the sake of fighting.  Now, men who hunt trouble in the mountain desert generally find all that they may desire, but for the time being everyone held back, wolfishly, waiting for another to take the first step toward Donnegan.  Indeed, there was an unspoken conviction that the man who took the first step would probably not live to take another.  In the meantime both men and women gave Donnegan the lion’s share of their attention.  There was only one who was clever enough to conceal it, and that one was the pair of eyes to which the red-haired man was playing—­Nelly Lebrun.  She confined herself strictly to Jack Landis.

So it was that when Milligan announced a tag dance and the couples swirled onto the floor gayly, Donnegan decided to take matters into his own hands and offer the first overt act.  It was clumsy; he did not like it; but he hated this delay.  And he knew that every moment he stayed on there with big George behind his chair was another red rag flaunted in the face of The Corner.