The freckled boy watched her with a curious interest. She made no more sex appeal to him than he did to her, and that was none at all. The first thing that had moved him in the child was the friendlessness back of her spitfire offense. She knew no women, no other girls. The conditions of life kept her aloof from the ones she met casually once or twice a year. She suspected their laughter, their whispers about the wild girl on Piceance Creek. The pride with which she ignored them was stimulated by her sense of inferiority. June had read books. She felt the clothes she made were hideous, the conditions of her existence squalid; and back of these externals was the shame she knew because they must hide themselves from the world on account of the secret. Bob did not know all that, but he guessed some of it. He had not gone very far in experience himself, but he suspected that this wild creature of the hills was likely to have a turbulent and perhaps tragic time of it. She was very much a child of impulse. Thirstily she had drunk in all he could tell her of the world beyond the hills that hemmed them in. He had known her frank, grateful, dreamy, shy, defiant, and once, for no apparent reason, a flaming little fury who had rushed to eager repentance when she discovered no offense was meant. He had seen her face bubbling with mirth at the antics of a chipmunk, had looked into the dark eyes when they were like hill fires blazing through mist because of the sunset light in the crotch of the range. "I reckon Mr. Tolliver won't let this Houck bully _you_ none," the boy said. "I ain't scared of him," she answered. But June knew there would be small comfort for her in the thought of her father's protection. She divined intuitively that he would be a liability rather than an asset in any conflict that might arise between her and Jake Houck. "If there was anything I could do--but o' course there ain't." "No," she agreed. "Oh, well, I'm not worryin'. I'll show him when he comes back. I'm as big as he is behind a gun." Bob looked at her, startled. He saw she was whistling to keep up her courage. "Are you sure enough afraid of him?" Her eyes met his. She nodded. "He said he was coming back to marry me--good as said I could like it or lump it, he didn't care which." "Sho! Tha's jus' talk. No girl has to marry a man if she don't want to. You don't need any gun-play. He can't make his brags good if you won't have him. It's a free country." "If he told you to do something--this Jake Houck--you wouldn't think it was so free," the girl retorted without any life in her voice. He jumped up, laughing. "Well, I don't expect he's liable to tell me to do anything. He ain't ever met up with me. I gotta go peel the spuds for supper. Don't you worry, June. He's bluffin'." "I reckon," she said, and nodded a careless good-bye. CHAPTER IV CLIPPED WINGS