Suddenly the girl's hand was raised with a quick motion, and something
gleamed in the sun across his sight. There was a loud report, and one of
the birds fell almost at his feet, dead. It was a sage-hen. Then the girl
turned and walked towards him with as haughty a carriage as ever a society
belle could boast.
"You were laughing at me," she said quietly.
It had all happened so suddenly that the man had not time to think.
Several distinct sensations of surprise passed over his countenance. Then,
as the meaning of the girl's act dawned upon him, and the full intention
of her rebuke, the color mounted in his nice, tanned face. He set down the
tin cup, and balanced the bit of corn bread on the rim, and arose.
"I beg your pardon," he said. "I never will do it again. I couldn't have
shot that bird to save my life," and he touched it with the tip of his tan
leather boot as if to make sure it was a real bird.
The girl was sitting on the ground, indifferently eating some of the
cooked pork. She did not answer. Somehow the young man felt uncomfortable.
He sat down, and took up his tin cup, and went at his breakfast again; but
his appetite seemed in abeyance.
"I've been trying myself to learn to shoot during the last week," he began
soberly. "I haven't been able yet to hit anything but the side of a barn.
Say, I'm wondering, suppose I had tried to shoot at those birds just now
and had missed, whether you wouldn't have laughed at me--quietly, all to
yourself, you know. Are you quite sure?"
The girl looked up at him solemnly without saying a word for a full
minute.
"Was what I said as bad as that?" she asked slowly.
"I'm afraid it was," he answered thoughtfully; "but I was a blamed idiot
for laughing at you. A girl that shoots like that may locate the Desert of
Sahara in Canada if she likes, and Canada ought to be proud of the honor."
She looked into his face for an instant, and noted his earnestness; and
all at once she broke into a clear ripple of laughter. The young man was
astonished anew that she had understood him enough to laugh. She must be
unusually keen-witted, this lady of the desert.
"If 'twas as bad as that," she said in quite another tone, "you c'n
laugh."
They looked at each other then in mutual understanding, and each fell to
eating his portion in silence. Suddenly the man spoke.