Bull frowned. “D’you really think she’s in love?”
Benson shrugged. “When a girl fusses with a young man’s clothes she doesn’t hate him.”
Bull broke a second frowning pause. “You’ve knowed her almost all her life. Kedn’t you put in a word?”
The Englishman made a wry face. “I did, about six months ago, when I first noticed this thing starting. But never again!” He laughed, a little self-consciously. “I never had any one sauce me so in all my life. Told me that it was none of my damn business; to go home and boss my poor wife. Said that she preferred Mexicans to English, anyway. Phe-e-ew! I never think of it, even now, without aching to spank her. No, counsel wouldn’t help her.”
“But she simply kain’t be allowed to go ahead an’ marry him.” Bull’s coal eyes flashed with the old wicked gleam. “Before that I’d – lay for him an’ shoot him.”
Benson regarded him dryly. “Your plan has the advantage of finality, but – it would lead to reprisals. Old Icarza stands well with Valles. If anything happened to his beloved son we’d be wiped out so completely there’d be no one left to mourn us. But why worry? We don’t know for sure whether she even loves him. Give me two cards. I raise you three blues.”
For two hours thereafter the two played and talked, arranging a code of smoke signals by day, beacons by night, to warn the haciendas. But under it Bull’s thought still revolved around Lee and her problem. The party had returned from the walk, and Lee was shooing all her guests off to bed before his brow cleared and he uttered a low chuckle.
“What’s the matter?” Benson looked up in surprise.
“Oh, jest something I was thinking of. I raise you two reds.”
Not until Jake woke up when Bull entered the bunkhouse did his secret thought find expression. “Sure I noticed it,” he answered Jake’s remark concerning Lee’s “likin’ for that Mexican.” “But leave it to me.”
“What d’you allow to do?”
This time Bull laughed outright. “Mrs. Mills was saying, t’other day, that we’d have to import a rival. ’Tain’t sech a bad idea.”
“What d’you reckon to do – put an ad in the paper ‘Wanted, a husband’?”
“Never you mind,” Bull quietly replied to the cynical comment. “I’m going, to-morrow, up to El Paso.”
X: WANTED – A HUSBAND
Departures are usually cheerless affairs, but the morning sun loosed a flood of gold into the patio where the party was in process of dissolution. William Benson had left with Jake and Sliver, when they went out on the range, so Bull sat and smoked alone.
It was very pleasant there. His after-breakfast pipe was always the sweetest of the day, and while puffing contentedly Bull observed with an indulgent grin two small brown criadas, darting with needle and thread and pins from room to room with first-aid-to-injured habits; the transparent flirtations, stealthy glances after the girls came out; the beauty of innocent sex, of youth in love – set his big rough heart aglow. The girls, with keen instinct for honest feeling, felt it. The young men, with natural respect for quiet power, admired his kindliness and strength. Their farewells and invitations were hearty and sincere.
“You’ve promised and promised and never come yet – that is, for a real visit,” Phœbe and Phyllis rebuked him.
The young men earnestly charged him, “We look to you to take care of our girls till we’re in shape to look after them ourselves.”
Not till the Icarzas bid him good-by did that kindly glow fade. Even when Isabel slid a small soft hand into his huge paw and turned on him the full power of her big Spanish eyes while uttering lovely felicities, he remained non-committal. He frowned hearing Lee accept an invitation for a visit in the near future. But when she came in, after they left, the hostile look had faded.
“Oh, didn’t we have a lovely time?” She patted his arm. “And it was all due to you.”
“And now I’ll take my pay. I want to go up to El Paso.”
“Oh, I’m so glad!” Darting into her room, she came running back with a fat roll of bills. “I felt dreadfully, yesterday, because you and Mr. Sliver and Mr. Jake had to wear your working-clothes. While you are in El Paso I want you to buy a nice suit apiece.”
Now fine raiment, even of the vogue of the Western cow towns, was the last thing in the world that Bull’s heart desired. But she looked so pretty in her earnestness, he found it hard to refuse. His laugh rumbled through the patio.
“Now that’s real nice of you. But back up at the mine we’ve all got store clothes to burn. One o’ these days, when the work ain’t so pressing, Sliver kin ride over an’ get ’em. Fifty’ll be all I’ll need.”
“Oh dear!” she gave in, with a little disappointed sigh. “I did want to do something; you’ve all been so kind.”
But she made up for the disappointment by busy preparations for his comfort. She packed her own suit-case with socks and clean shirts, then bossed the job while her criadas brushed and curried and sponged him. After tying one of her father’s cravats around his neck she turned him round and round like a mother inspecting a school-boy, finally dismissed him with a gentle pat.
On the Mexican Central, trains were running, as Bull put it, “be how an’ when,” but fortune favored him. Catching a mixed freight and passenger at the burned station that midnight, he camped down on the rear platform to avoid the fetor of unwashed bodies and tobacco smoke exhaled by the mixture of peones, revolutionary soldiers, and fat Mexicancomerciantes that jammed the only first-class car. When he fell asleep he could make out the dim outlines of another form that evolved under the light of the following morning into an American war correspondent.
“’Morning, friend,” he greeted Bull, cordially. “My name is Naylor. Yours? Glad to meet you, Mr. Perrin. Now if you’ll tip this water-bottle for me, I’ll do the same by you, and we can take off at least one layer of dust and cinders.”
The operations placed them at once on terms that would have taken years to establish in civilization’s cultured circles. Before it was over, Bull had learned that his companion was “on a little pasear between revolutionary battles,” and had given, in return, some inkling of his own affairs. The young fellow’s lithe, spare figure, clean face, fearless gray eyes, impressed him strongly, and while the train ambled along through the scrubby desert of sand and cactus toward Juarez, he eyed and estimated and measured him with a care that attracted, at last, the other’s attention.
“Hey!” he demanded. “Is my nose out of plumb, or what?”
Bull warded off offense with the truth. “I happened to be looking for a man about your size. Any chance of your changing your job?”
“That depends.” The correspondent answered, breezily, but with caution. “Without being what you could call wedded to this sandy, thirsty, cutthroat business of Mexican revolutions, I like it better than anything else in sight. But what’s your lay? Ranching?” He repeated it after Bull. “In central Chihuahua? Forget it, friend.”
Bull eyed him wistfully. He fitted so closely to specifications. Finally, in desperation, he opened his simple heart; was explaining his quest when the young fellow burst out laughing.
“I beg your pardon.” He raised a protesting hand against Bull’s black glower, then went on with sympathetic seriousness: “But you’ll have to admit that one doesn’t see a man of your build every day in this matrimonial business. So there’s a damsel in distress, hey? That alters the case. If it wasn’t for a little girl up in San Francisco that I expect to marry some day when I become very rich and famous, I’d try and help you out, for I know just how you feel. It would be a damned shame to have her throw herself away on a Mexican. But you’ve laid yourself out some job. Not that you won’t be able to find men, good-looking