contour to her figure. Whether from languor, ill-health, or more
probably from a morbid consciousness of her own height, she moved with
a slightly affected stoop that had become a habit. It did not seem
ungraceful to Hale, already attracted by her delicate profile, her
large dark eyes, and a certain weird resemblance she had to some
half-domesticated dryad.
"That'll do, Maw," she said, dismissing her parent with a nod. "I'll
talk to Dick."
As the door closed on the old woman, Zenobia leaned her hands on
the back of a chair, and confronted the admiring eyes of Dick with a
goddess-like indifference.
"Now wot's the use of your playin' this yer game on me, Dick? Wot's the
good of your ladlin' out that hogwash about huntin'? HUNTIN'! I'll tell
yer the huntin' you-uns hev been at! You've been huntin' George Lee
and his boys since an hour before sun up. You've been followin' a blind
trail up to the Ridge, until the snow got up and hunted YOU right here!
You've been whoopin' and yellin' and circus-ridin' on the roads like
ez yer wos Comanches, and frightening all the women folk within
miles--that's your huntin'! You've been climbin' down Paw's old slide
at last, and makin' tracks for here to save the skins of them condemned
government horses of the Kempany! And THAT'S your huntin'!"
To Hale's surprise, a burst of laughter from the party followed this
speech. He tried to join in, but this ridiculous summary of the result
of his enthusiastic sense of duty left him--the only earnest believer
mortified and embarrassed. Nor was he the less concerned as he found the
girl's dark eyes had rested once or twice upon him curiously. Zenobia
laughed too, and, lazily turning the chair around, dropped into it. "And
by this time George Lee's loungin' back in his chyar and smokin' his
cigyar somewhar in Sacramento," she added, stretching her feet out to
the fire, and suiting the action to the word with an imaginary cigar
between the long fingers of a thin and not over-clean hand.
"We cave, Zeenie!" said Rawlins, when their hilarity had subsided to a
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