“You sure are,” Andy assented, deliberately refraining from saying “yes, ma’am,” as had been his impulse.
“To come away out here—all alone—among all you wild cowboys with your guns buckled on and your wicked little mustangs—Are you sure you won’t shoot me?”
Andy eyed her pityingly. If she meant it, he thought, she certainly was wabbly in her mind. If she thought that was the only kind of talk he could savvy, then she was a blamed idiot; either way, he felt antagonistic. “The law shall be respected in your case,” he told her, very gravely.
She smiled almost as if she could see the joke; after which she became twitteringly, eagerly in earnest. “Since you live near here, you must know the Whitmores. Miss Whitmore came out here, two or three years ago, and married her brother’s coachman, I believe—though I’ve heard conflicting stories about it; some have said he was an artist, and others that he was a jockey, or horse-trainer. I heard too that he was a cowboy; but Miss Whitmore certainly wrote about this young man driving her brother’s carriage. However, she is married and I have a letter of introduction to her. The president of our club used to be a schoolmate of her mother. I shall stop with them—I have heard so much about the Western hospitality—and shall get into touch with my cowboys from the vantage point of proximity. Did you say you know them?”
“I work for them,” Andy told her truthfully in his deep amazement, and immediately repented and wished that he had not been so virtuous. With Andy, to wish was to do—given the opportunity.
“Then I can go with you out to their farm—ranchero! How nice! And on the way you can tell me all about yourself and your life and hopes—because I do want to get in touch with you all, you know—and I’ll tell you all my plans for you; I have some beautiful plans! And we’ll be very good friends by the time we reach our destination, I’m sure. I want you to feel from the start that I am a true friend, and that I have your welfare very much at heart. Without the confidence of my cowboys, I can do nothing. Are there any more at home like you?”
Andy looked at her suspiciously, but it was so evident she never meant to quote comic opera, that he merely wondered anew. He struggled feebly against temptation, and fell from grace quite willingly. It isn’t polite to “throw a load” at a lady, but then Andy felt that neither was it polite for a lady to come out with the avowed intention of improving him and his fellows; it looked to him like butting in where she was not wanted, or needed.
“Yes, ma’am, there’s quite a bunch, and they’re pretty bad. I don’t believe you can do much for ’em.” He spoke regretfully.
“Do they—drink?” she asked, leaning forward and speaking in the hushed voice with which some women approach a tabooed subject.
“Yes ma’am, they do. They’re hard drinkers. And they”—he eyed her speculatively, trying to guess the worst sins in her category—“they play cards—gamble—and swear, and smoke cigarettes and—”
“All the more need of someone to help them overcome,” she decided solemnly. “What you need is a coffee-house and reading room here, so that the young men will have some place to go other than the saloons. I shall see to that right away. And with the Mutual Improvement and Social Society organized and working smoothly, and a library of standard works for recreation, together with earnest personal efforts to promote temperance and clean-living, I feel that a wonderful work can be done. I saw you drive into town, so I know you can take me out with you; I hope you are going to start soon. I feel very impatient to reach the field and put my sickle to the harvest.”
Andy mentally threw up his hands before this unshakable person. He had meant to tell her that he had come on horseback, but she had forestalled him. He had meant to discourage her—head her off, he called it to himself. But there seemed no way of doing it. He pushed back his chair and rose, though he had not tasted his pie, and it was lemon pie at that. He had some faint notion of hurrying out of town and home before she could have time to get ready; but she followed him to the door and chirped over his shoulder that it wouldn’t take her two minutes to put on her wraps. Andy groaned.
He tried—or started to try—holding out at Rusty Brown’s till she gave up in despair; but it occurred to him that Chip had asked him to hurry back. Andy groaned again, and got the team.
She did not wait for him to drive around to the hotel for her; possibly she suspected his intentions. At any rate, she came nipping down the street toward the stable just as he was hooking the last trace, and she was all ready and had a load of bags and bundles.
“I’m not going to begin by making trouble for you,” she twittered. “I thought I could just as well come down here to the wagon as have you drive back to the hotel. And my trunk did not come on the train with me, so I’m all ready.”
Andy, having nothing in mind that he dared say to a lady, helped her into the wagon.
At sundown or thereabouts—for the days were short and he had a load of various things besides care—Andy let himself wearily into the bunk-house where was assembled the Happy Family. He merely grunted when they spoke to him, and threw himself heavily down upon his bunk.
“For Heaven’s sake, somebody roll me a cigarette! I’m too wore out to do a thing, and I haven’t had a smoke since dinner,” he groaned, after a minute.
“Sick?” asked Pink solicitously.
“Sick as a dog! water, water!” moaned Andy. All at once he rolled over upon his face and shook with laughter more than a little hysterical, and to the questioning of the Happy Family gave no answer but howls. The Happy Family began to look at one another uneasily.
“Aw, let up!” Happy Jack bellowed. “You give a man the creeps just to listen at yuh.”
“I’m going to empty the water-bucket over yuh in a minute,” Pink threatened, “Go get it, Cal; it’s half full.”
Andy knew well the metal of which the Happy Family was made, and the night was cool for a ducking. He rolled back so that they could see his face, and struggled for calm. In a minute he sat up and merely gurgled.
“Well, say, I had to do something or die,” he explained, gasping. “I’ve gone through a heap, the last few hours, and I was right where I couldn’t do a thing. By gracious, I struck the ranch about as near bug-house as a man can get and recover. Where’s a cigarette?”
“What you’ve gone through—and I don’t give a cuss what it is—ain’t a marker for what’s going to happen if yuh don’t loosen up on the history,” said Jack Bates firmly.
Andy smoked hungrily while he surveyed the lot. “How calm and innocent yuh all look,” he observed musingly, “with your hats on and saying words that’s rude, and smoking the vile weed regardless, never dreaming what’s going to drop, pretty soon quick. Yuh make me think of a hymn-song my step-mother used to sing a lot, about ‘They dreamed not of danger, those sinners of old, whom—”
“Hand me the water bucket,” directed Pink musically.