I thought you were going to be gone for several days." Ford, with embarrassed haste to match her own, presented Rock in the same breath with wishing that Rock was elsewhere; for Mose was not in the kitchen, and he had not had more than a few words with her for twenty-four hours.

He was perilously close to forgetting his legal halter when he looked at her.
She was, he thought, about as sweet a picture of a woman as a man need ever look upon, as she stood there with the red Navajo blanket falling back from her dark hair, and with her wide, honest eyes fixed upon Rock.
She was blushing, as if she, too, wished Rock elsewhere.

She turned impulsively, set down the basin she had been holding in her arm, and pulled the blanket up so that it framed her face bewitchingly.
"Mose can bring up the mince-meat when he comes--since he isn't here," she said hurriedly.

"We weren't looking for you back, but dinner will be ready in half an hour or so, I think." She pulled open the door and went out into the storm.
Rock stared at the door, still quivering with the slam she had given it.
Then he looked at Ford, and afterward sat down weakly upon a stool, and began dazedly pulling the icicles from his mustache.
"Well--I'll--be--cremated!" he said in a whisper.
"And what's eating you, Rock ?" Ford quizzed gayly.

He had seen something in the eyes of Josephine, when he met her, that had set his blood jumping again.