She did not retreat, but continued looking at him in a half-surly embarrassment.

“I ain’t a bit frightened,” she said; “I’m not going to run away,—­don’t you fear.”

“Glad to hear it,” said Lance, with unmistakable satisfaction, “but why did you go for my revolver?”

She flushed again and was silent.  Presently she began to kick the earth at the roots of the tree, and said, as if confidentially to her foot: 

“I wanted to get hold of it before you did.”

“You did?—­and why?”

“Oh, you know why.”

Every tooth in Lance’s head showed that he did, perfectly.  But he was discreetly silent.

“I didn’t know what you were hiding there for,” she went on, still addressing the tree, “and,” looking at him sideways under her white lashes, “I didn’t see your face.”

This subtle compliment was the first suggestion of her artful sex.  It actually sent the blood into the careless rascal’s face, and for a moment confused him.  He coughed.  “So you thought you’d freeze on to that six-shooter of mine until you saw my hand?”

She nodded.  Then she picked up a broken hazel branch, fitted it into the small of her back, threw her tanned bare arms over the ends of it, and expanded her chest and her biceps at the same moment.  This simple action was supposed to convey an impression at once of ease and muscular force.

“Perhaps you’d like to take it now,” said Lance, handing her the pistol.

“I’ve seen six-shooters before now,” said the girl, evading the proffered weapon and its suggestion.  “Dad has one, and my brother had two derringers before he was half as big as me.”

She stopped to observe in her companion the effect of this capacity of her family to bear arms.  Lance only regarded her amusedly.  Presently she again spoke abruptly: 

“What made you eat that grass, just now?”

“Grass!” echoed Lance.

“Yes, there,” pointing to the yerba buena.

Lance laughed.  “I was hungry.  Look!” he said, gayly tossing some silver into the air.  “Do you think you could get me some breakfast for that, and have enough left to buy something for yourself?”

The girl eyed the money and the man with half-bashful curiosity.

“I reckon Dad might give ye suthing if he had a mind ter, though ez a rule he’s down on tramps ever since they run off his chickens.  Ye might try.”

“But I want you to try.  You can bring it to me here.”

The girl retreated a step, dropped her eyes, and, with a smile that was a charming hesitation between bashfulness and impudence, said:  “So you are hidin’, are ye?”

“That’s just it.  Your head’s level.  I am,” laughed Lance unconcernedly.

“Yur ain’t one o’ the McCarthy gang—­are ye?”

Mr. Lance Harriott felt a momentary moral exaltation in declaring truthfully that he was not one of a notorious band of mountain freebooters known in the district under that name.