Page:Caroline Lockhart--The Fighting Shepherdess.djvu/19

 "Hello, Pete!"

"Hello yourself," he answered, but he looked at her daughter.

As soon as they were through the gate the pack ponies stopped and stood with spreading legs and drooping heads while Mullendore sauntered over to Kate and laid a hand familiarly on her shoulder.

"Ain't you got a howdy for me, kid? "

She moved aside and began stripping the harness from the horse for the quite evident purpose of avoiding his touch.

"You'd better get them packs off," she replied, curtly. "Looks like you'd got on three hundred pounds."

"Wouldn't be surprised. Them bear traps weigh twenty poun' each, and green hides don't feel like feathers, come to pack 'em over the trail I've come."

Kate looked at him for the first time.

"I wisht I was a man! I bet I'd work you over for the way you abuse your stock!"

Mullendore laughed.

"Glad you ain't, Katie—but not because I'd be afraid of gettin' beat up."

He looked her up and down with mocking significance. "Say, but you'll make a great squaw for some feller. Been thinkin' I'd make a deal with your mother to take you back to the mountings with me when I go. I'll learn you how to tan hides, and a lot of things you don't know."

The girl's lip curled.

"Yes, I'd like to tan hides for you, Pete Mullendore! When I get frost bit in August I'll go, but not before."

He replied easily:

"You ain't of age yet, Katie, and you have to mind your maw. I've got an idee that she'll tell you to go if I say so."