When she talked, he listened and followed her, and yet all the while he was following his own thoughts and impressions as well.
It was a nervy thing for her to do, this riding astride, and he didn't know, after all, whether he liked it or not.
His ideas of women were prone to be old-fashioned; they were the ones he had imbibed in the early-day, frontier life of his youth, when no woman was seen on anything but a side-saddle.
He had grown up to the tacit fiction that women on horseback were not bipeds.
It came to him with a shock, this sight of her so manlike in her saddle.
But he had to confess that the sight looked good to him just then.
Two other immediate things about her struck him.
First, there were the golden spots in her eyes.
Queer that he had never noticed them before.
Perhaps the light in the office had not been right, and perhaps they came and went.
No; they were glows of color—a sort of diffused, golden light.
Nor was it golden, either, but it was nearer that than any color he knew.
It certainly was not any shade of yellow.
A lover's thoughts are ever colored, and it is to be doubted if any one else in the world would have called Dede's eyes golden.
But Daylight's mood verged on the tender and melting, and he preferred to think of them as golden, and therefore they were golden.
And then she was so natural.
He had been prepared to find her a most difficult young woman to get acquainted with.
Yet here it was proving so simple. There was nothing highfalutin about her company manners—it was by this homely phrase that he differentiated this Dede on horseback from the Dede with the office manners whom he had always known.
And yet, while he was delighted with the smoothness with which everything was going, and with the fact that they had found plenty to talk about, he was aware of an irk under it all.
After all, this talk was empty and idle.
He was a man of action, and he wanted her, Dede Mason, the woman; he wanted her to love him and to be loved by him; and he wanted all this glorious consummation then and there.
Used to forcing issues used to gripping men and things and bending them to his will, he felt, now, the same compulsive prod of mastery.
He wanted to tell her that he loved her and that there was nothing else for her to do but marry him.
And yet he did not obey the prod.
Women were fluttery creatures, and here mere mastery would prove a bungle.
He remembered all his hunting guile, the long patience of shooting meat in famine when a hit or a miss meant life or death.
Truly, though this girl did not yet mean quite that, nevertheless she meant much to him—more, now, than ever, as he rode beside her, glancing at her as often as he dared, she in her corduroy riding-habit, so bravely manlike, yet so essentially and revealingly woman, smiling, laughing, talking, her eyes sparkling, the flush of a day of sun and summer breeze warm in her cheeks.
CHAPTER XIII
Another Sunday man and horse and dog roved the Piedmont hills.
And again Daylight and Dede rode together.
But this time her surprise at meeting him was tinctured with suspicion; or rather, her surprise was of another order. The previous Sunday had been quite accidental, but his appearing a second time among her favorite haunts hinted of more than the fortuitous.
Daylight was made to feel that she suspected him, and he, remembering that he had seen a big rock quarry near Blair Park, stated offhand that he was thinking of buying it.
His one-time investment in a brickyard had put the idea into his head—an idea that he decided was a good one, for it enabled him to suggest that she ride along with him to inspect the quarry.
So several hours he spent in her company, in which she was much the same girl as before, natural, unaffected, lighthearted, smiling and laughing, a good fellow, talking horses with unflagging enthusiasm, making friends with the crusty-tempered Wolf, and expressing the desire to ride Bob, whom she declared she was more in love with than ever.
At this last Daylight demurred. Bob was full of dangerous tricks, and he wouldn't trust any one on him except his worst enemy.
"You think, because I'm a girl, that I don't know anything about horses," she flashed back.
"But I've been thrown off and bucked off enough not to be over-confident.
And I'm not a fool. I wouldn't get on a bucking horse. I've learned better.
And I'm not afraid of any other kind.
And you say yourself that Bob doesn't buck."
"But you've never seen him cutting up didoes," Daylight said.
"But you must remember I've seen a few others, and I've been on several of them myself.
I brought Mab here to electric cars, locomotives, and automobiles.
She was a raw range colt when she came to me.
Broken to saddle that was all.
Besides, I won't hurt your horse."
Against his better judgment, Daylight gave in, and, on an unfrequented stretch of road, changed saddles and bridles.
"Remember, he's greased lightning," he warned, as he helped her to mount.
She nodded, while Bob pricked up his ears to the knowledge that he had a strange rider on his back.
The fun came quickly enough—too quickly for Dede, who found herself against Bob's neck as he pivoted around and bolted the other way.