“He looks ordinary enough to me.”
“Well, well!” she rallied. “I should have thought that even to the innocent gaze of a tenderfoot–Let me hasten to explain that the common or garden variety of cowshepherd is to be distinguished in many respects from his predecessor of the Texas trail.”
“Texas trail?” he rejoined. “Now I know you’re trying to string me. This Gowan can’t be much older than I am.”
The girl dropped her bantering tone, and answered soberly: “He is only twenty-five, and yet he is a full generation older than you. He was born and raised in a cow camp. He is one of the few men of the type that remain to link the range of today with the vanished world of the cattle frontier.”
“Yet you say that the fellow is only my age?”
“In years, yes. But in type he belongs to the generation that is past–the generation of longhorns, long drives, long Colt’s, and short lives; of stampedes, and hats like yours, badmen, and Injins.”
“Surely you cannot mean that this–You called him ‘Kid.’”
“Kid Gowan,” she confirmed. “Yes, he holds to the old traditions even in that. There are six notches on the hilt of his ‘gun,’ if you count the two little ones he nicked for his brace of Utes.”
“What! He is a real Indian fighter, like Kit Carson?”
“Oh, no, it was merely a band of hide hunters that came over the line from Utah, and Mr. Gowan helped the game warden run them back to their reservation.”
“He actually killed two of them?”
“Yes,” replied the girl, her gravity deepening to a concerned frown. “The worst of it is that I’m not altogether certain it was necessary. Men out here, as a rule, think much too little of the life of an Indian.”
“Ah!” murmured Ashton. “Two Indians. But didn’t you speak of six notches?”
“Six,” confirmed the girl, her brow partly clearing. “The others were different. Three were rustlers. The sheriff’s posse overtook them. Both sides were firing. Kid circled around and shot three. He happened to have a long-range rifle. Daddy says they threw up their hands when the first one fell; but Kid explained to me that he was too far away to see it.”
“Ah!” murmured Ashton the second time, and he put up his hand to the hole in the front of his sombrero.
“The last was two years ago,” went on the girl. “There was a dispute over a maverick. Kid was tried and acquitted on his plea of self-defense. There were no witnesses. He claimed that the other man drew first. Two empty shells were found in the other man’s revolver, and only one in Kid’s. That cleared him.”
Ashton took off his hat and stared at the holes where the heavy forty-four bullet had gone in and gone out. He was silent.
“You see, poor Kid has been unfortunate,” remarked the girl, as she headed her pony down over the edge of the mesa. “That time with the rustlers, all the posse were firing, and he just happened to be the one that got the best aim; and the time with the Indians, I’m sure he did not shoot to kill. It just happened that way. He told me so himself.”
Ashton ran his tongue over his lip. “Yes–I suppose so,” he muttered.
“Kid has all the good qualities and only a few of the faults of the old-time cowboys,” went on the girl. “He is almost fiercely loyal to Daddy’s interests. That’s why he led a raid on a sheep outfit, four years ago, when almost half of a large flock were run over into Deep Cañon–poor innocent beasts! Daddy was furious with Kid; but there was no legal proof as to who were members of the attacking party, and the sheep were destroying our range. All of Daddy’s cattle would have starved.”
“He was not punished?” murmured Ashton.
“Daddy could not be expected to discharge him, could he, when Kid did it to save our range? You see, it was just because he was so very loyal. You must not think from these things that he–It is true he is suspicious of strangers, but he always has been very kind and gentle to me. I am very fond of him.”
“You are?” exclaimed Ashton, stirred from his uneasy depression. “I should hardly have thought him the kind to interest a girl like you.”
“Really?” she bantered. “Why not? I have lived on the range ever since I was fourteen.”
He stared at her incredulously. “Since you were fourteen?”
“For nine years,” she added, smiling at his astonishment.
“But–it can’t be,” he protested, his eyes on her stylish costume. “At least, not all the time.”
She nodded at him encouragingly. “So you can see–a little. Nearly all my winters have been spent in Denver, except one in Europe.”
“Europe?” he repeated.
“We didn’t cross in a cattle boat,” she flashed back at him, dimpling mischievously. “Nor did I go as the Queen of the Rancho, or of the Roundup, or even of the Wild and Woolly Outlaw Band.”
He flushed with mortification. “I am only too well aware, Miss Knowles, how you must regard me.”
“Oh, I do not regard you at all–as yet,” she bantered. “But of course I could not expect you to know that Daddy’s sister is one of the Sacred Thirty-six.”
“Sacred–? Is that one of the orders of nuns?”
“None whatever,” she punned. In the same moment she drew a most solemn looking face. “My deah Mistah Ashton, I will have you to understand my reference was to that most select coterie which comprises Denver’s Real Society.”
“Indeed!” he said, with a subtle alteration in his tone and manner. “You say that your aunt is one of–”
“My aunt by adoption,” she corrected.
“Adoption?”
“I am not Daddy’s natural daughter. He adopted me,” explained the girl in her frank way.
“Yes?” asked Ashton, plainly eager to learn more of her history.
Without seeming to observe this, she adroitly balked his curiosity–“So, you see, Daddy’s sister is only my aunt by adoption. Still, she has been very, very good to me; though I love Daddy and this free outdoor life so much that I insist on coming back home every spring.”
“Ah, yes, I see,” he replied. “Really, Miss Knowles, you must think me a good deal of a dub.”
“Oh, well, allowances should be made for a tenderfoot,” she bantered.
“At least I recognized your queenliness, even if at first I did mistake what you were queen of,” he thrust back.
“So you still insist I’m a queen? Of what, pray?”
“Of Hearts!” he answered with fervor.
His daring was rewarded with a lovely blush. But she was only momentarily disconcerted.
“I am not so sure of that,” she replied. “Though it’s not Queen of Spades, because I do not have to work; and it can’t be Diamonds, because Daddy is no more than comfortably well to do–only six thousand head of stock. But as for Hearts–No, I’m sure it must be Clubs; I do so love to knock around. Really, if ever they break up this range, it will break my heart same time.”
“Break up the range? How do you mean?”
“Put it under irrigation and turn it into orchards and farms, as they have done so many places here on the Western Slope. You know, Colorado apples and peaches are fast becoming famous even in Europe.”
“I do not wonder, not in the least–if I am to judge from a certain sample of the Colorado peach,” he ventured.
This