Jezebel only laughed and as the gate of the corral scraped when Mullendore pulled it open to herd a saddle horse and pack ponies through, she called out in her harsh croak: "Hello, Pete!"
"Hello yourself," he answered, but he looked at her daughter.
As soon as they were through the gate the pack ponies stopped and stood with spreading legs and drooping heads while Mullendore sauntered over to Kate and laid a hand familiarly on her shoulder.
"Ain't you got a howdy for me, kid?"
She moved aside and began stripping the harness from the horse for the quite evident purpose of avoiding his touch.
"You'd better get them packs off," she replied, curtly. "Looks like you'd got on three hundred pounds."
"Wouldn't be surprised. Them bear traps weigh twenty poun' each, and green hides don't feel like feathers, come to pack 'em over the trail I've come."
Kate looked at him for the first time.
"I wisht I was a man! I bet I'd work you over for the way you abuse your stock!"
Mullendore laughed.
"Glad you ain't, Katie--but not because I'd be afraid of gettin' beat up."
He looked her up and down with mocking significance, "Say, but you'll make a great squaw for some feller. Been thinkin' I'd make a deal with your mother to take you back to the mountings with me when I go. I'll learn you how to tan hides, and a lot of things you don't know."
The girl's lip curled.
"Yes, I'd like to tan hides for you, Pete Mullendore! When I get frost bit in August I'll go, but not before."
He replied easily: "You ain't of age yet, Katie, and you have to mind your maw. I've got an idee that she'll tell you to go if I say so."
"A whole lot my mother would mind what you say!" Yet in spite of her defiance a look of fear crossed the girl's face.
She slipped her arm through the harness and started towards the shed, Mullendore following with his slouching walk, an unprepossessing figure in his faded overalls, black and white mackinaw coat and woolen cap.
The trapper was tall and lank, with a pair of curious, unforgettable eyes looking out from a swarthy face that told of Indian blood. They were round rather than the oblong shape to be expected in his type, and the iris a muddy blue-gray. The effect was indescribably queer, and was accentuated by the coal-black lashes and straight black brows which met above a rather thick nose. He had a low forehead, and when he grinned his teeth gleamed like ivory in his dark face. He boasted of Apache-Mexican blood "with a streak of white."