She made no protest. Indeed, she displayed a caution in lowering herself
that surprised him. Every foothold she tested carefully with her weight.
Once she asked him to place her shoe in the crevice for her. He had never
seen her take so much time in making sure or be so fussy about her
personal safety.
Safely on the ledge again, she attempted a second time to dismiss him.
"Thank you, Mr. Flatray. I won't take any more of your time."
He looked at her steadily before he spoke. "You're mighty high-heeled,
'Lissie. You know my name ain't Mr. Flatray to you. What's it all about?
I've told you twice I couldn't get here any sooner."
She flamed out at him in an upblaze of feminine ferocity. "And I tell
you, that I don't care if you had never come. I don't want to see you or
have anything to do with you."
"Why not?" He asked it quietly, though he began to know that her charge
against him was a serious one.
"Because I know what you are now, because you have made us believe in you
while all the time you were living a lie."
"Meaning what?"
"I was gathering poppies on the other side of Antelope Pass this
afternoon."
"What has that got to do with me being a liar and a scoundrel," he wanted
to know.
"Oh, you pretend," she scoffed. "But you know as well as I do."
"I'm afraid I don't. Let's have the indictment."
"If everybody in Papago County had told me I wouldn't have believed it,"
she cried. "I had to see it with my own eyes before I could have been
convinced."
"Yes, well what is it you saw with your eyes?"
"You needn't keep it up. I tell you I saw it all from the time you fired
the shot."
He laughed easily, but without mirth. "Kept tab on me, did you?"
She wheeled from him, gave a catch of her breath, and caught at the rock
wall to save herself from falling.
He spoke sharply. "You hurt yourself in the trough."
"I sprained my ankle a little, but it doesn't matter."
He understood now why she had made so slow a descent and he suspected that
the wrench was more than she admitted. The moon had come out from under a
cloud and showed him a pale, tear-stained face, with a row of even, little
teeth set firm against the lower lip. She was in pain and her pride was
keeping it from him.