Page:RidersOfSilences - Max Brand.djvu/142

136. And wipe the wolf-look off your face. After all, Jack's a girl, not a gun-fighter."

Then he knocked and opened the door.

She lay face down on her bunk, her head turned from them and toward the wall. Slender and supple and strong, it was still only the size of her boots and her hands that would make one look at her twice and then guess that this was a woman, for she was dressed, from trousers even to the bright bandanna knotted around her throat, like any prosperous range rider.

Now, to be sure, the thick coils of black hair told her sex, but when the broad-brimmed sombrero was pulled well down on her head, when the cartridge-belt and the six-gun were slung about her waist, and most of all when she spurred her mount recklessly across the hills, no one could have suspected that this was not some graceful boy born and bred in the mountain-desert, wilful as a young mountain-lion, and as dangerous.

"Sleepy?" called Wilbur.

She waited a moment and then queried with exaggerated impudence: "Well?"

Ennui unspeakable was in that drawling monotone.

"Brace up; I've got news for you."

Her hand moved and all the graceful body, but it was only with a yawn. What need was there to speak? She wished to be alone.

"And I've brought Pierre along to tell you about it." "Oh!"