Flick merely shrugged his shoulders, and they walked on without further speech on the matter.  Presently Bob’s keen eyes descried some one walking down the mesquite avenue toward them.  “Why, it’s Hughie!” he exclaimed.

Even as he spoke the boy stopped and listened intently.  He stood motionless, waiting until they drew nearer, and then he lifted his head, which he had bent sidewise the better to hear their almost soundless footsteps.

Pearl, seeing that her interview with Flick was soon to be interrupted, stopped short in the path and laid one hand detainingly upon his arm.  “Bob,” she said, in her softest tone, “Bob, you and I have been pals for a good while; you aren’t going against me now?”

He stopped, obedient to her touch, and looked at her unwillingly.  He could always hold to his resolution in the face of her anger, but to withstand her when she chose to coax!  That was another and more difficult matter.  But if he met her gaze reluctantly there was no wavering in either his glance or his voice.

“I’m going to save you from Hanson, Pearl,” he paused for the fraction of a second, “by any means I got to use.”

She flashed one swift, violent glance of resentment, and then immediately controlled herself, as she could always do when she chose and when she was playing to win; so now she cast down her eyes and sighed.

The motes of the glancing sunbeams fell over her like a shower of gold, spangling the blue cotton frock until it appeared a more regal vesture than purple and ermine; her head was bent, her body drooped like a lily in the noonday heat, her whole attitude was soft, and forlorn and appealing, as if she, this wilful, untamed creature, subdued herself to accept a wounding decree, and bore it with all the pathos of unmurmuring resignation.

Flick’s heart smote him, he longed to clasp her to his breast and give her everything she impossibly craved.  And now it was he who sighed, and then clinched his hands as if to steel his resolution.

She heard the sigh:  she saw from the quick movement of his hands, the sudden, involuntary straightening of the shoulders that the struggle was on, so she lifted her eyes half wistfully, half doubtingly to his and thus gazed a moment and then smiled her faintly crooked heart-shattering smile: 

“You and I have been friends too long for us to begin to quarrel now, isn’t that so, Bob?” Again she laid her hand on his arm.

He caught it in both of his and pressed it hard.  “I guess you know we’ll never quarrel, Pearl.  I guess you know that, no matter what you say or do, it’ll never make any difference to me.”

“’Course I know it.  And you’re not going against me now, Bob, either, are you?” She lifted his hand, and with one of her rare, caressing gestures laid it against her cheek for a moment and, turning her face a little, lightly brushed his palm with her lips.

He shivered and quickly drew his hand away.  There was silence between them for a few moments and then he sighed again and more heavily than ever.  “Oh, Pearl,” he cried, “what do you want to make things so hard for?  Let that dog—­” he checked himself hastily, seeing her expression.  “I beg your pardon, you don’t look at him that way.  Let Hanson go.  I know you about as well as anybody in the world, don’t I?”