He watched the girl’s quick fingers busy with the blackened coffee pot, realized at one and the same time that she had no ring upon a particular finger and that it was idiotic for him to so much as look for it, never allowed his glance to wander higher than her hands and attacked his bread and butter as though its immediate consumption were the most important thing in all the world.  And she, when she felt that he was not watching her, when his silence was almost a tangible thing, looked at him with quick furtiveness.  The something in her expression which had spoken of terror began to give place to the look of amusement which twitched at her lips and flickered up in the soft grey of her eyes.  And since still he gave no sign of breaking the silence which had fallen over them, she said at last: 

“Didn’t you know all the time who I was?”

Then he looked up at her inquiringly.  And when he saw that she was smiling, a little of his sudden restraint fled from him and his eyes smiled back gently a little and reassuringly into hers.

“All the time?” he asked.  “Meaning when?”

“Back there.  On the trail,” she told him.

“Well,” he admitted slowly, “I guess I was pretty sure.  Of course I couldn’t be dead certain.  It might have been anybody’s tracks ... that is,” he corrected with a quick broadening of the smile, “anybody with a foot the right size to fit into a boot like that.”

“Like what?” she asked in turn.

“Like the one that made the tracks by the creek where you came into the main trail, where you stopped to drink.”

“You saw that?”

“If I hadn’t seen it how was I to guess that it was you ahead of me?” he demanded.  And when she frowned a little and did not answer for a moment he gave his attention to the black coffee which she had poured for him.  “You sure know how to make coffee right,” he complimented her with a vast show of sincerity.  “This is the best I ever tasted.”

“I’m glad you like it,” she retorted as the frown fled before a hint of laughter.  “I found it already made in the pot and just warmed it over!”

“Oh,” said Thornton.  And then with much gravity of tone but with twinkling eyes, “Come to think of it it isn’t the taste of it that a man notices; it’s the being just hot enough.  I never had any coffee better warmed-up than this.”

“Thank you.”  She stirred the sugar in her own cup of muddy looking beverage and without glancing up at him this time, went on, “You mean that you didn’t know who I was when you saw me?”

“At the bank in Dry Town?”

“Of course not.  Back there on the trail.”

“I didn’t see you,” he told her.

Now she flashed another quick upward glance at him as though seeking for a reason lying back of his words.

“I saw you” she said steadily.  “Twice.  First from the top of a hill half a dozen miles back when you got down to look at your horse’s foot.  Did he pick up a stone?”