That was why she hesitated, undecided, at first.  Then Thornton began to speak and she wanted to know what he was going to say.  Besides, she admitted to herself, begrudgingly, that she had never known a man dance as this man danced, and the magic of the waltz was on her.

“I had to return something you left at Harte’s Camp,” were his first words.  “That’s the reason I rode over tonight.”

“What is it?” she asked quickly.

Now suddenly there rose up into her heart a swift hope that after all he was not entirely without principle, that he had grown ashamed of having taken from a girl the money with which she had been entrusted and that he was bringing it back to her.  If he were man enough to do this ... the blood ran up higher in her cheeks at the thought ... she could almost forgive him for that other thing he had done.

So they moved on in the dance, her hand resting lightly in his, his fingers closing about it with no hint of a pressure to tell her that again he would take what small advantage he could, his eyes looking gravely down into the eyes which flashed up at him with her question.

“Didn’t you lose anything that night?” he countered.  “In the cabin after I went for the horses?”

“Well?” she countered, the quick hope leaping higher within her.

“You did?”

She wondered why his eyes were so grave, so stern now, why they had ceased to say flattering things of her and merely hinted of a mind at work on a puzzle.  How could she know that while she was thinking of a yellow, cloth lined envelope, he was thinking of a horse lamed with a knife, and hoping to learn from her something of the man who had wounded the animal?

“Well?” she asked again, hardly above a whisper.  Did he dare even talk of it here, among all these men and women?  She glanced about her anxiously to see if Pollard were in the room.  “You are going to give it back to me?”

Her wonderment was hardly more than Thornton’s.  Why should she show this eager excitement, because of a lost spur rowel?

“I rode over to give it to you,” he answered, swinging her clear of an eddy in the swirl of dancers and to the edge of the crowd.  “First, though, I want you to tell me something.  A man came into the cabin about three minutes before you came out to the barn, didn’t he?”

She had lowered her eyes, aware that people were noticing them, her looking up so earnestly, him looking down into her face so gravely.  But now, in spite of her, she looked up at him again.

“Why do you ask that?” she demanded with a flash of anger that he should continue this useless pretence.  “Do you think I am a fool?”

“No.  I am asking because I want to know.  It’s a safe gamble that the man you had a tussel with is the man who lamed my horse.”

“Is it?” she asked with cool sarcasm.  “And it’s just as safe a gamble that he is a coward and a ... brute!”