At this the man threw back his head and burst into a laugh, so deep, so rich, so exuberantly joyous, that it fell upon the plain's grim silence with the incongruous contrast of sunshine on the dust of a dungeon. She sat upright with her anger boiling toward expression. Before she realized it he had leaned forward and laid his hand on the pommel of her saddle, his face still red and wrinkled with laughter. "That's all right, little lady, but you don't know quite all about us." "I know enough," she answered. "Before you get to California you'll know more. There's a mountain man and a voyageur now in the train. Do you think Zavier and I have squaw wives?" With the knowledge that Zavier was just then so far from contemplating union with a squaw, she could not say the contemptuous "yes" that was on her tongue. As for the strange man--she shot a glance at him and met the gray eyes still twinkling with amusement. "Savage!" she thought, "I've no doubt he has"--and she secretly felt a great desire to know. What she said was, "I've never thought of it, and I haven't the least curiosity about it." They rode on in silence, then he said, "What's made you mad?" "Mad? I'm not mad." "Not at all?" "No. Why should I be?" "That's what I want to know. You don't like me, little lady, is that it?" "I neither like nor dislike you. I don't think of you." She immediately regretted the words. She was so completely a woman, so dowered with the instinct of attraction, that she realized they were not the words of indifference. "My thoughts are full of other people," she said hastily, trying to amend the mistake, and that was spoiled by a rush of color that suddenly dyed her face. She looked over the horse's head, her anger now turned upon herself. The man made no answer, but she knew that he was watching her. They paced on for a silent moment then he said: "Why are you blushing?" "I am not," she cried, feeling the color deepening. "You've told two lies," he answered. "You said you weren't angry, and you're mad all through, and now you say you're not blushing, and your face is as pink as one of those little flat roses that grow on the prairie. It's all right to get mad and blush, but I'd like to know why you do it. I made you mad someway or other, I don't know how. Have _I_ made you blush, too?" he leaned nearer trying to look at her. "How'd I do that?" She had a sidelong glimpse of his face, quizzical, astonished, full of piqued interest. She struggled with the mortification of a petted child, suddenly confronted by a stranger who finds its caprices only ridiculous and displeasing. Under the new sting of humiliation she writhed, burning to retaliate and make him see the height of her pedestal. "Yes, I _have_ told two lies," she said. "I was angry and I _am_ blushing, and it's because I'm in a rage with you." The last touch was given when she saw that his surprise contained the bitter and disconcerting element of amusement.