“Was Gillis your father?” the man questioned, determined to make her recognize his presence.

“I suppose so; I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?  Am I to understand you are actually uncertain whether this man was your father or not?”

“That is about what I said, was n’t it?  Not that it is any of your business, so far as I know, Mr. Bob Hampton, but I answered you all right.  He brought me up, and I called him ‘dad’ about as far back as I can remember, but I don’t reckon as he ever told me he was my father.  So you can understand just what you please.”

“His name was Gillis, was n’t it?”

The girl nodded wearily.

“Post-trader at Fort Bethune?”

Again the rumpled head silently acquiesced.

“What is your name?”

“He always called me ‘kid,’” she admitted unwillingly, “but I reckon if you have any further occasion for addressing me, you’d better say, ‘Miss Gillis.’”

Hampton laughed lightly, his reckless humor instantly restored by her perverse manner.

“Heaven preserve me!” he exclaimed good naturedly, “but you are certainly laying it on thick, young lady!  However, I believe we might become good friends if we ever have sufficient luck to get out from this hole alive.  Darn if I don’t sort of cotton to you, little girl—­you’ve got some sand.”

For a brief space her truthful, angry eyes rested scornfully upon his face, her lips parted as though trembling with a sharp retort.  Then she deliberately turned her back upon him without uttering a word.

For what may have been the first and only occasion in Mr. Hampton’s audacious career, he realized his utter helplessness.  This mere slip of a red-headed girl, this little nameless waif of the frontier, condemned him so completely, and without waste of words, as to leave him weaponless.  Not that he greatly cared; oh, no! still, it was an entirely new experience; the arrow went deeper than he would have willingly admitted.  Men of middle age, gray hairs already commencing to shade their temples, are not apt to enjoy being openly despised by young women, not even by ordinary freckle-faced girls, clad in coarse short frocks.  Yet he could think of no fitting retort worth the speaking, and consequently he simply lay back, seeking to treat this disagreeable creature with that silent contempt which is the last resort of the vanquished.

He was little inclined to admit, even to himself, that he had been fairly hit, yet the truth remained that this girl was beginning to interest him oddly.  He admired her sturdy independence, her audacity of speech, her unqualified frankness.  Mr. Hampton was a thoroughgoing sport, and no quality was quite so apt to appeal to him as dead gameness.  He glanced surreptitiously aside at her once more, but there was no sign of relenting in the averted face.  He rested lower against the rock, his face upturned toward the sky, and thought.  He was becoming vaguely aware that something entirely new, and rather unwelcome, had crept into his life during that last fateful half-hour.  It could not be analyzed, nor even expressed definitely in words, but he comprehended this much—­he would really enjoy rescuing this girl, and he should like to live long enough to discover into what sort of woman she would develop.