"Good!" said the girl, "I'll be waiting for you with two horses before
you are ready."

He turned away, but had taken hardly a step before he turned, saying:
"But why are you so sure that you will be ready before I--" but she was
already down the steps from the veranda and stepping briskly down the
street.

"There is an element of the unexplainable in woman," said the doctor,
and resumed his way to his room. Once there, something prompted him to
act with the greatest possible speed. He tossed his toilet articles and
a few changes of linen into a small, flexible valise and ran down the
stairs. He reached the veranda again, panting, and the girl was not in
sight; a smile of triumph appeared on the grave, colourless lips of the
doctor. "Feminine instinct, however, is not infallible," he observed to
himself, and to one of the cowboys, lounging loosely in a chair nearby,
he continued his train of thoughts aloud: "Though the verity of the
feminine intuition has already been thrown in a shade of doubt by many
thinkers, as you will undoubtedly agree."

The man thus addressed allowed his lower jaw to drop but after a moment
he ejaculated: "Now what in hell d'you mean by that?"

The doctor already turned away, intent upon his thoughts, but he now
paused and again faced the cowboy. He said, frowning: "There is
unnecessary violence in your remark, sir."

"Duck your glasses," said the worthy in question. "You ain't talkin' to
a book, you're talking to a man."