Page:BM Bower - Her Prairie Knight.djvu/214

  warmly. "But I didn't want you to come on; it isn't your quarrel. And I know the way now. You needn't have come any farther" "You forgot the blanket," Rowdy reminded wickedly. "I think a lot of that Navajo."

"You insisted upon my taking it," she retorted, and took refuge in silence.

For a long hour they plodded blindly. Rowdy beat his hands often about his body to start the blood, and meditated yearnigly upon hot coffee and the things he liked best to eat. Also, a good long pull at a flask wouldn't be bad, either, he thought. And he hoped this little schoolma'am knew where she was going—truth to tell, he doubted it.

After a while, it seemed that Miss Conroy doubted it also. She took to leaning forward and straining her eyes to see through the gray wall before.

"There should be a gate here," she said dubiously, at last.

"It seems to me," Rowdy ventured mildly, "if there were a gate, it would have some kind of a fence hitched to it; wouldn't it?"

Miss Conroy was in no mood for facetiousness, 208