"Of course you were not to have the idol just yet,
but it is better for you to have it before the time than that the
Taggarts should get hold of it."
"Do you know where the idol is hid?" he asked.
She told him no, that she had never consulted the diagram.
"I reckon," he said, looking into her steady eyes, "that you're tellin'
the truth. In that case it will be safe where it is, for a while.
I'll be lookin' it up when I get hold of the money."
Her chin raised triumphantly. "You will not get that so easily," she
said. "But," she added, interestedly, "now that you know where the
idol is, why don't you get it and convert it into cash?"
He reddened and eyed her with a decidedly crestfallen air. "I ain't so
much stuck on monkeyin' with them religious things," he admitted.
Again a doubt arose in his mind concerning her relations with Neal
Taggart. The fact that she had not divulged the hiding place of the
idol to him was proof that if he had been trying to deceive her he had
not succeeded. This thought filled him with a sudden elation.
"Lately," he said, "it begins to look as though you was gettin' some
sense. You're gettin' reasonable. I reckon you'll be a bang-up girl,
give you time."
Her lips curled, but there was a flash of something in her eyes that he
could not analyze.
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