"The kid's sure some looker," soliloquized Danny. "I seen a lotta broads in my day, but I ain't never seen nothin' could touch her. She'd sure be a swell number dolled up in them Boul Mich rags. Geeze, wouldn't she knock their lamps out! I wonder where this Midian burgh is she says she comes from. If they's all as swell lookin' as her, that's the burgh for me."
Jezebel stirred and he reached over and shook her on the shoulder. "We'd better be beatin' it," he said. "We don't want to miss old Smithy and that dame."
Jezebel sat up and looked about her. "Oh," she exclaimed, "you frightened me. I thought something was coming."
"Why? Been dreaming?"
"No. You said we'd have to beat something."
"Aw, cheese it! I meant we'd have to be hittin' the trail for the big rocks."
Jezebel looked puzzled.
"Hike back to them cliffs where you said old Smithy and that Lady Barbara dame were going to meet you."
"Now I understand," said Jezebel. "All right, come on." But when they reached the cliffs there was no sign of Smith or Lady Barbara, and at Jezebel's suggestion they walked slowly southward in the direction of the place where she and the English girl had hoped to make a crossing to the outer world.
"How did you get into the valley, Danny?" asked the girl. "I come through a big crack in the mountain," he replied. "That must be the same place Smith came through," she said. "Could you find it again?"
"Sure. That's where I'm headed for now."
It was only mid-afternoon when Danny located the opening into the fissure. They had seen nothing of Lady Barbara and Smith, and they were in a quandary as to what was best to do.
"Maybe they come along and made their getaway while we was hittin' the hay," suggested Danny.
"I don't know what you are talking about," said Jezebel, "but what I think is that they may have located the opening while we were asleep and gone out of the valley."
"Well ain't that what I said?" demanded Danny.
"It didn't sound like it."
"Say, you trying to high hat me?"
"High hat?"
"Aw, what's the use?" growled the "Gunner," disgustedly. "Let's you and me beat it out of this here dump and look for old Smithy and the skirt on the other side. What say?"
"But suppose they haven't gone out?"
"Well, then we'll have to come back again; but I'm sure they must have. See this foot print?" he indicated one of his own, made earlier in the day, which pointed toward the valley. "I guess I'm getting good," he said. "Pretty soon that Tarzan guy won't have no edge on me at all."
"I'd like to see what's on the other side of the cliffs," said Jezebel. "I have always wanted to do that."
"Well, you won't see nothin' much," he assured her. "Just some more scenery. They ain't even a hot dog stand or a single speakeasy."
"What are those?"
"Well, you might call 'em filling stations."
"What are filling stations?"
"Geeze, kid, what do you think I am, a college perfessor? I never saw anyone who could ask so many questions in my whole life."
"My name—"
"Yes, I know what your name is. Now come on and we'll crawl through this hole-in-the-wall. I'll go first. You follow right behind me."
The rough going along the rocky floor of the fissure taxed the "Gunner's" endurance and his patience, but Jezebel was all excitement and anticipation. All her life she had dreamed of what might lie in the wonderful world beyond the cliffs.
Her people had told her that it was a flat expanse filled with sin, heresy, and iniquity, where, if one went too far he would surely fall over the edge and alight in the roaring flames of an eternal hades; but Jezebel had been a doubter. She had preferred to picture it as a land of flowers and trees and running water, where beautiful people laughed and sang through long, sunny days. Soon she was to see for herself, and she was much excited by the prospect.
And now at last they came to the end of the great fissure and looked out across the rolling foot hills toward a great forest in the distance.
Jezebel clasped her hands together in ecstacy. "Oh, Danny," she cried, "how beautiful it is!"
"What?" asked the "Gunner."
"Oh, everything. Don't you think it is beautiful, Danny?"
"The only beautiful thing around here, k—Jezebel, is you," said Danny.
The girl turned and looked up at him with her great blue eyes. "Do you think I am beautiful, Danny?"
"Sure I do."
"Do you think I am too beautiful?"
"There ain't no such thing," he replied, "but if they was you're it. What made you ask?"
"Lady Barbara said I was."
The "Gunner" considered this for some moments, "I guess she's right at that kid."
"You like to call me Kid, don't you?" asked Jezebel. "Well, it seems more friendly-like," he explained, "and it's easier to remember."
"All right, you may call me Kid if you want to, but my name is Jezebel."
"That's a bet," said Danny. "When I don't think to call you Jezebel, I'll call you kid, Sister."
The girl laughed. "You're a funny man, Danny. You like to say everything wrong. I'm not your sister, of course."
"And I'm damn glad you ain't, kid."
"Why? Don't you like me?"
Danny laughed. "I never seen a kid like you before," he said. "You sure got me guessin'. But at that," he added, a little seriously for him, "they's one thing I ain't guessin' about and that's that you're a good little kid."
"I don't know what you are talking about," said Jezebel.
"And at that I'll bet you don't," he replied; "and now kid, let's sit down and rest. I'm tired."
"I'm hungry," said Jezebel.
"I ain't never see a skirt that wasn't, but why did you have to bring that up? I'm so hungry I could eat hay."
"Smith killed a kid and we ate some of that," said Jezebel. "He wrapped the rest up in the skin and I suppose he lost it when the North Midians attacked us. I wish—"
"Say," exclaimed Danny, "what a dumb-bell I am!" He reached down into one of his pockets and brought out several strips of raw meat. "Here I been packin' this around all day and forgets all about it—and me starvin' to death."
"What is it?" asked Jezebel, leaning closer to inspect the unsavory morsels.
"It's pig," said Danny as he started searching for twigs and dry grass to build a fire, "and I know where they is a lot more that I thought I couldn't never eat but I know now I could—even if I had to fight with the maggots for it."
Jezebel helped him gather wood, which was extremely scarce, being limited to dead branches of a small variety of artemisia that grew on the mountain side; but at length they had collected quite a supply, and presently they were grilling pieces of the boar meat over the flames. So preoccupied were they that neither saw three horsemen draw rein at the top of a ridge a mile away and survey them.
"This is like housekeeping, ain't it?" remarked the "Gunner."
"What is that?" asked Jezebel.
"That's where a guy and his girl friend get hitched and go to doin' their own cooking. Only in a way this is better—they ain't goin' to be no dishes to wash."
"What is hitched, Danny?" asked Jezebel.
"Why—er," Danny flushed. He had said many things to many girls in his life, many of them things that might have brought a blush to the cheek of a wooden Indian; but this was the first time, perhaps, that Danny had felt any embarrassment.
"Why—er," he repeated, "hitched means married."
"Oh," said Jezebel. She was silent for a while, watching the pork sizzling over the little flames. Then she looked up at Danny. "I think housekeeping is fun," she said.
"So do I," agreed Danny; "with you," he added and his voice was just a trifle husky. His eyes were on her; and there was a strange light in them, that no other girl had ever seen there. "You're a funny little kid," he said presently. "I never seen one like you before," and then the neglected pork fell off the end of the sharpened twig, with which be had been holding it, and tumbled into the fire.