“Well?” he prompted. One heavy black lock tossed down across his forehead, his long gray eyes shining in the dusk; he stared at her still with a look that was both questioning and mocking. “Say it—say it. You’ve got a bad opinion of me. You’ve been warned against me.” He laughed at the idea. “That day over at the Sorrows——” “Oh, don’t let’s talk about that,” said Hilda nervously. “Let’s just forget about it.” “Suits me,” said Fayte easily. “All the same, I’ve been wondering ever since if you were the only one that suspected—Say, Hilda, what did set you flying off to _Tres Piños_ to warn dad that day?” “Why—Uncle Hank sent me,” she said incautiously. “He thought, maybe—because——” “Pearsall.” Fayte looked at her with narrowed eyes. “Then he was tipped off—as I thought—and there’s another score to even up with the J I C bunch.” “No. No—you’re mistaken. Uncle Hank didn’t see any one from—from over here.” “But you did.” Hilda got to her feet, saying decidedly: “If you will keep on talking about that—I’m going down where the others are.” “Not yet.” Fayte rose too. They stood a moment. Tall, handsome, a man now, he was, after all, very much the same as the small boy who had blown her doll to pieces—and thought it was funny. “I don’t want to quarrel,” she began, “but——” “That’s all right,” Fayte laughed. “Good way to begin. Hilda, you’re going to like me a lot, before we’re done. You can’t get away from me. Better not try to. And you’re too pretty a girl to put on touch-me-not airs.” CHAPTER XXIV “INVITATION TO THE DANCE” From the first, Fayte Marchbanks’s presence at the Alamositas affected the whole atmosphere there—and quite differently from anything Hilda could have imagined. Maybelle had said they would have more fun if he were home. Hilda wouldn’t have put it just that way, exactly, yet everything was somehow changed—and rather exciting. That very first evening at the dinner-table he began it. Hilda was conscious of some strain back of the general talk. It ran on jerkily for a time, and then Fayte sent one of his narrowed, sliding glances from her face to the colonel’s and remarked: “If I’d known sooner that you were here, Hilda, you bet I wouldn’t have stayed down there on the border eating frijoles and operating in wet horses.” The queer silence that followed made Hilda a little nervous, and she asked, smiling uncertainly: “What are ‘wet horses’?” “Don’t be a bigger fool than you have to, Fayte.” The colonel scowled at his son. “If you’d really been mixed up in all the things you pretend——” “Shall I tell Hilda what wet horses are, mamma?” Fayte interrupted unconcernedly, speaking to his stepmother, ignoring his father. “Tell her whatever you please, honey,” Mrs. Marchbanks said easily. “She’ll know you’re only fooling. Jinnie,” to the child in the high-chair, “quit pounding with your spoon.”