“Did I insult you?” he asked, with suave gentleness.  “Then if you feel insulted I expect you lay claim to being a lady.  But I reckon that don’t fit in with holding up strangers at the end of a gun.  If I’ve insulted you I’ll ce’tainly apologize, but you’ll have to show me I have.  We’re in Texas, which is next door but one to Missouri, ma’am.”

“I don’t want your apologies.  I detest and hate you,” she cried,

“That’s your privilege, ma’am, and it’s mine to know whyfor I’m held up with a gun when I’m traveling peaceably along the road,” he answered evenly.

“I’ll not tell you.”

He spoke softly as if to himself.  “That’s too bad.  I kinder hate to take her to jail, but I reckon I must.”

She shrank back, aghast and white.

“No, no!  You don’t understand.  I didn’t mean to—­ I only wanted—­ Why, I meant to pay you for the team.”

“I’ll understand when you tell me,” he said placidly.

“I’ve told you.  I needed the team.  I was going to let you have one of our horses and seventy-five dollars.  It’s all I have with me.”

“One of your horses, you say?  With seventy-five dollars to boot?  And you was intending to arrange the trade from behind that gun.  I expect you needed a team right bad.”

His steady eyes rested on her, searched her, appraised her, while he meditated aloud in a low easy drawl.

“Yes, you ce’tainly must need the team.  Now I wonder why?  Well, I’d hate to refuse a lady anything she wants as bad as you do that.”  He swiftly swooped down and caught up her revolver from the ground, tossed it into the air so as to shift his hold from butt to barrel, and handed it to her with a bow.  “Allow me to return the pop-gun you dropped, ma’am,”

She snatched it from him and leveled it at him so that it almost touched his forehead.  He looked at her and laughed in delighted mockery.

“All serene, ma’am.  You’ve got me dead to rights again.”

His very nonchalance disarmed her.  What could she do while his low laughter mocked her?

“When you’ve gone through me complete I think I’ll take a little pasear over the hill and have a look at your hawss.  Mebbe we might still do business.”

As he had anticipated, his suggestion filled her with alarm.  She flew to bar the way.

“You can’t go.  It isn’t necessary.”

“Sho!  Of course it’s necessary.  Think I’m going to buy a hawss I’ve never seen?” he asked, with deep innocence.

“I’ll bring it here.”

“In Texas, ma’am, we wait on the ladies.  Still, it’s your say-so when you’re behind that big gun.”

He said it laughing, and she threw the weapon angrily into the seat of the rig.

“Thank you, ma’am.  I’ll amble down and see what’s behind the hill.”

By the flinch in her eyes he tested his center shot and knew it true.  Her breast was rising and falling tumultuously.  A shiver ran through her.