The Sheriff's Son
The young woman winced and looked at her foot. The angry color flushed into her cheeks. Her annoyance was at herself, but she visited it upon him.
"Who told you to take off my boot?"
"I thought it might help the pain."
She snatched up the boot and started to pull it on, but gave this up with a long breath that was almost a groan.
"I'm a nice kind of a baby," she jeered.
"It must hurt like sixty," he ventured. Then, after momentary hesitation: "You'd better let me bind up your ankle. I have water in my canteen. I 'll run up and get some as soon as I'm through."
There was something of sullen suspicion in the glance her dark eyes flashed at him.
"You can get me water if you want to," she told him, a little ungraciously.
He understood that his offer to tie up the ankle had been refused. When he returned with his horse twenty minutes later, he knew why she had let him go for the water. It had been the easiest way to get rid of him for the time. The fat bulge beneath her stocking showed that she had taken advantage of his absence to bind the bruised leg herself.
79
