She can ride like a
man; she can shoot almost as straight and as fast as Pierre; she can
handle a knife; and she's been through hell for Pierre, and she'll go
through it again. She can ride the trail all day with him and finish
it less fagged than he is. She can chop down a tree as well as he can,
and build a fire better. She can hold up a train with him or rob a
bank and slip through a town in the middle of the night and laugh with
him about it afterward around a campfire. I ask you, is that the sort
of a woman that's meant for Pierre?"
And Mary answered, with bowed head: "She is."
She cried instantly afterward, cutting short the look of wild triumph
on the face of the boy: "But there's no such woman; there's no one who
could do these things! I know it!"
The boy sprang to his feet, flushing as red as the girl was white.
"You fool, if you're blind and got to have your eyes open to see, look
at the woman!"
And she tore the wide-brimmed sombrero from her head. Down past the
shoulders flooded a mass of blue-black hair.
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