Page:Lost Ecstasy (1927).pdf/27

 A tall figure moved forward, touched its Stetson hat, stood immobile. It was an easy casual gesture, even faintly an insolent one. It was as though he said: "I'm McNair, and who the devil are you?"

That was Kay's first sight of Tom McNair. He stepped out of the shadow into the light of a lamp post and into her life with equal nonchalance. At the moment—and indeed for some time—she scarcely existed at all to him.

"What's the girl like?" they asked him that night at the bunk house.

"Like any other girl," he told them, and yawned. "She's a Dowling. That's enough."

Which it was, Henry Dowling being about as popular at that time with the outfit as a rattlesnake in a round-up bed.

But from the time she first saw him Kay was intensely conscious of Tom McNair. Perhaps it was because he typified the valley to her, and her dreams about it. Certainly he was the first embodiment of its romance that she had found. She could hardly have seen, there in the dusk, his darkly handsome face, the broad shoulders and slim waist of which he was so proud. And if, like most cowboys, his soft drawl betrayed his southern origin, he might have had bronchitis for all the use he made of it.

"I'm McNair," he said briefly. "How many are you?"

"Five," said Herbert, who did not care for his manner. "How many do we look like?"

"Plenty, for one car." He glanced at Kay, clutching her jewel case and still staring at him. "You with the party? Better give me that bag."

"It's nothing," said Kay. "I'll carry it."

Perhaps he misunderstood the tightness in her voice, the queer constraint, for he turned on his heel and plunged into the darkness, leaving them to follow as best they could.

"Stiff!" he reflected. "She's Miss Dowling, and I'm to remember it. To hell with her!"

But he was grinning to himself as he tied the luggage with ropes to the sides of the car, and gave orders for the trunks to be sent out the next day. To himself and at himself, for he had meant to be late for the train; had even, in pursuit