“What’s the game?” demanded Cal, when the door closed behind their indulgent foreman.
“Why, it’s this. (Pass the syrup, Happy.) T’morrow’s Sunday, so we’ll have time t’ burn. We’ll dig up all the guns we can find, and catch up the orneriest cayuses in our strings, and have a real, old lynching bee—sabe?”
“Who yuh goin’ t’ hang?” asked Slim, apprehensively. “Yuh needn’t think I’ll stand for it.”
“Aw, don’t get nervous. There ain’t power enough on the ranch t’ pull yuh clear of the ground. We ain’t going to build no derrick,” said Jack, witheringly. “We’ll have a dummy rigged up in the bunk house. When Chip and the doctor heave in sight on top of the grade, we’ll break loose down here with our bronks and our guns, and smoke up the ranch in style. We’ll drag out Mr. Strawman, and lynch him to the big gate before they get along. We’ll be ‘riddling him with bullets’ when they arrive—and by that time she’ll be so rattled she won’t know whether it’s a man or a mule we’ve got strung up.”
“You’ll have to cut down your victim before I get there,” grinned Chip. “I never could get the creams through the gate, with a man hung to the frame; they’d spill us into the washout by the old shed, sure as fate.”
“That’d be all right. The old maid would sure know she was out West— we need something to add to the excitement, anyway.”
“If the Old Man’s new buggy is piled in a heap, you’ll wish you had cut out some of the excitement,” retorted Chip.
“All right, Splinter. We won’t hang him there at all. That old cottonwood down by the creek would do fine. It’ll curdle her blood like Dutch cheese to see us marching him down there—and she can’t see the hay sticking out of his sleeves, that far off.”
“What if she wants to hold an autopsy?” bantered Chip.
“By golly, we’ll stake her to a hay knife and tell her to go after him!” cried Slim, suddenly waking up to the situation.
The noon train slid away from the little, red depot at Dry Lake and curled out of sight around a hill. The only arrival looked expectantly into the cheerless waiting room, gazed after the train, which seemed the last link between her and civilization, and walked to the edge of the platform with a distinct frown upon the bit of forehead visible under her felt hat.
A fat young man threw the mail sack into a weather-beaten buggy and drove leisurely down the track to the post office. The girl watched him out of sight and sighed disconsolately. All about her stretched the rolling grass land, faintly green in the hollows, brownly barren on the hilltops. Save the water tank and depot, not a house was to be seen, and the silence and loneliness oppressed her.
The agent was dragging some boxes off the platform. She turned and walked determinedly up to him, and the agent became embarrassed under her level look.
“Isn’t there anyone here to meet me?” she demanded, quite needlessly. “I am Miss Whitmore, and my brother owns a ranch, somewhere near here. I wrote him, two weeks ago, that I was coming, and I certainly expected him to meet me.” She tucked a wind-blown lock of brown hair under her hat crown and looked at the agent reproachfully, as if he were to blame, and the agent, feeling suddenly that somehow the fault was his, blushed guiltily and kicked at a box of oranges.
“Whitmore’s rig is in town,” he said, hastily. “I saw his man at dinner. The train was reported late, but she made up time.” Grasping desperately at his dignity, he swallowed an abject apology and retreated into the office.
Miss Whitmore followed him a few steps, thought better of it, and paced the platform self-pityingly for ten minutes, at the end of which the Flying U rig whirled up in a cloud of dust, and the agent hurried out to help with the two trunks, and the mandolin and guitar in their canvas cases.
The creams circled fearsomely up to the platform and stood quivering with eagerness to be off, their great eyes rolling nervously. Miss Whitmore took her place beside Chip with some inward trepidation mingled with her relief. When they were quite ready and the reins loosened suggestively, Pet stood upon her hind feet with delight and Polly lunged forward precipitately.
The girl caught her breath, and Chip eyed her sharply from the corner of his eye. He hoped she was not going to scream—he detested screaming women. She looked young to be a doctor, he decided, after that lightning survey. He hoped to goodness she wasn’t of the Sweet Young Thing order; he had no patience with that sort of woman. Truth to tell, he had no patience with any sort of woman.
He spoke to the horses authoritatively, and they obeyed and settled to a long, swinging trot that knew no weariness, and the girl’s heart returned to its normal action.
Two miles were covered in swift silence, then Miss Whitmore brought herself to think of the present and realized that the young man beside her had not opened his lips except to speak once to his team. She turned her head and regarded him curiously, and Chip, feeling the scrutiny, grew inwardly defiant.
Miss Whitmore decided, after a close inspection, that she rather liked his looks, though he did not strike her as a very amiable young man. Perhaps she was a bit tired of amiable young men. His face was thin, and refined, and strong—the strength of level brows, straight nose and square chin, with a pair of paradoxical lips, which were curved and womanish in their sensitiveness; the refinement was an intangible expression which belonged to no particular feature but pervaded the whole face. As to his eyes, she was left to speculate upon their color, since she had not seen them, but she reflected that many a girl would give a good deal to own his lashes.
Of a sudden he turned his eyes from the trail and met her look squarely. If he meant to confuse her, he failed—for she only smiled and said to herself: “They’re hazel.”
“Don’t you think we ought to introduce ourselves?” she asked, composedly, when she was quite sure the eyes were not brown.
“Maybe.” Chip’s tone was neutrally polite.
Miss Whitmore had suspected that he was painfully bashful, after the manner of country young men. She now decided that he was not; he was passively antagonistic.
“Of course you know that I’m Della Whitmore,” she said.
Chip carefully brushed a fly off Polly’s flank with the whip.
“I took it for granted. I was sent to meet a Miss Whitmore at the train, and I took the only lady in sight.”
“You took the right one—but I’m not—I haven’t the faintest idea who you are.”
“My name is Claude Bennett, and I’m happy to make your acquaintance.”
“I don’t believe it—you don’t look happy,” said Miss Whitmore, inwardly amused.
“That’s the proper thing to say when you’ve been introduced to a lady,” remarked Chip, noncommittally, though his lips twitched at the corners.
Miss Whitmore, finding no ready reply to this truthful statement, remarked, after a pause, that it was windy. Chip agreed that it was, and conversation languished.
Miss Whitmore sighed and took to studying the landscape, which had become a succession of sharp ridges and narrow coulees, water-worn and bleak, with a purplish line of mountains off to the left. After several miles she spoke.
“What is that animal over there? Do dogs wander over this wilderness alone?”
Chip’s eyes followed her pointing finger.
“That’s