"But this--there must be something better than this!" she exclaimed.
"It is the one home where you could make yourself understood. The proprietor chances to speak English. If you come without notifying your--relatives, you must take what you find, or go on to San Diego. Your cousin is there--also his wife."
She shrugged her shoulders, and dropped wearily to a wooden bench.
"I can't ride another mile--I'm dead tired. But you don't ask why I came!"
"That is your husband's affair, not mine," he returned. "If there is nothing else I can do for you, I will go and look after my own affairs. I start south in the morning."
"Because I came?" she demanded, with a slight smile. At sight of it his face flushed, and then the color receded while he regarded her steadily.
"Don't make any mistake about that," he suggested. "I did leave town out of impatience with another friend of mine, who was wasting his time with you. Of course he would not listen to me, and he has evidently told you. I liked him, and did not want to see him made a fool of."
"Oh, you are a silly!" she replied, unfastening her hat-string and glancing at him strangely. "It never was that man for one little minute; you, of all the men, ought to know."
"I, of all the men, have been the one who did not guess that it was Teddy," he retorted. "But since it is, there is one thing to remember,--Teddy is the best fellow in the world, and the easiest mark, and you are not to forget it!"
"I did not promise to honor and obey you!" she retorted, petulantly.
"But if you don't in this case--" he halted abruptly and walked away. Her high, sweet voice called after him, but he did not turn his head. He evidently realized that he had come very near threatening her; and, after all, if Teddy chose to make a fool of himself for a pretty doll--
For she was undeniably pretty, and she had created quite a flurry a year before when she reached San Pedro by steamer from Mexico, a girlish widow with one child, and waited there until the English cousin of her husband, Eduardo Downing, had been notified and came up in state from his ranches, with his Mexican wife, to receive her.
One child more or less never made any difference on the ranch of Eduardo, and his wife rather liked the little white doll that was alive, for her own brown-skinned grandchildren to play with. It was better than an Indian baby--more of a novelty, so that the family affairs of the young widow were easily adjusted. She accepted invitations to visit friends of her cousin on ranches and in town. For a year she had earned the reputation of being a rather gay flirt, and she could have married several times. Keith Bryton's friends had more than hinted that she was waiting for him, and when the word went abroad that it was his half-brother, eyes were opened wide in Los Angeles. There were lifted brows, and smiles. Keith knew how the marriage would be commented upon, and he was filled with rage that she should assume at once her care-free attitude, and fraternize with Rafael Arteaga, as she evidently had done on the ride down. And Teddy trusted her absolutely--good old Teddy, who had been infatuated from the first sight of her, and had loved without hope until lately, very lately indeed!