Page:BM Bower - Her Prairie Knight.djvu/166

  rock, folded her hands meekly and looked from him to Keith, who seemed to claim a good deal of the man's attention. She observed that, at a long breath from Keith, his captor was instantly alert.

"Maybe your elbows ache, too," he remarked dryly. "They'll git over it, though; I've knowed a man t' grab at the clouds upwards of an hour, an' no harm done."

"That's encouraging, I'm sure." Keith shifted to the other foot.

"How's that sorrel?" demanded the man. "Can he go?"

Keith hesitated a second.

"Indeed he can go!" put in Beatrice eagerly. "He's every bit as good as Redcloud."

"Is that sorrel yours?" The man's eyes shifted briefly to her face.

"No-o." Beatrice, thinking how she had meant to own him, blushed.

"That accounts for it." He laughed unpleasantly. "I wondered why you was so dead anxious t' have me take him."

The eyes of Beatrice snapped sparks at him, but her manner was demure, not to say meek. "He 162