When she returned to her unexpected guest, Helen found him in conversation with McWilliams. The latter's gun had found again its holster, but his brown, graceful hand hovered close to its butt.
“Seems like a long time since the Lazy D has been honored by a visit from Mr. Bannister,” he was saying, with gentle irony.
“That's right. So I have come to make up for lost time,” came Bannister's quiet retort.
Miss Messiter did not know much about Wyoming human nature in the raw, but she had learned enough to be sure that the soft courtesy of these two youths covered a stark courage that might leap to life any moment. Wherefore she interposed.
“We'll be pleased to show you over the place, Mr. Bannister. As it happens, we are close to the hospital. Shall we begin there?”
Her cool, silken defiance earned a smile from the visitor. “All your cases doing well, ma'am?”
“It's very kind of you to ask. I suppose you take an interest because they are YOUR cases, too, in a way of speaking?”
“Mine? Indeed!”
“Yes. If it were not for you I'm afraid our hospital would be empty.”
“It must be right pleasant to be nursed by Miss Messiter. I reckon the boys are grateful to me for scattering my lead so promiscuous.”
“I heard one say he would like to lam your haid tenderly,” murmured McWilliams.
“With a two-by-four, I suppose,” laughed Bannister.
“Shouldn't wonder. But, looking y'u over casual, it occurs to me he might get sick of his job befo' he turned y'u loose,” McWilliams admitted, with a glance of admiration at the clean power showing in the other's supple lines.
Nor could either the foreman or his mistress deny the tribute of their respect to the bravado of this scamp who sat so jauntily his seat regardless of what the next moment might bring forth. Three wounded men were about the place, all presumably quite willing to get a clean shot at him in the open. One of them had taken his chance already, and missed. Their visitor had no warrant for knowing that a second might not any instant try his luck with better success. Yet he looked every inch the man on horseback, no whit disturbed, not the least conscious of any danger. Tall, spare, broad shouldered, this berry-brown young man, crowned with close-cropped curls, sat at the gates of the enemy very much at his insolent case.
“I came over to pay my party call,” he explained.
“It really wasn't necessary. A run in the machine is not a formal function.”
“Maybe not in Kalamazoo.”
“I thought perhaps you had come to get my purse and the sixty-three dollars,” she derided.
“No, ma'am; nor yet to get that bunch of cows I was going to rustle from you to buy an auto. I came to ask you to go riding with me.”
The audacity of it took her breath. Of all the outrageous things she had ever heard, this was the cream. An acknowledged outlaw, engaged in feud with her retainers over that deadly question of the run of the range, he had sauntered over to the ranch where lived a dozen of his enemies, three of them still scarred with his bullets, merely to ask her to go riding with him. The magnificence of his bravado almost obliterated its impudence. Of course she would not think of going. The idea! But her eyes glowed with appreciation of his courage, not the less because the consciousness of it was so conspicuously absent from his manner.
“I think not, Mr. Bannister” and her face almost imperceptibly stiffened. “I don't go riding with strangers, nor with men who shoot my boys. And I'll give you a piece of advice, sir. That is, to burn the wind back to your home. Otherwise I won't answer for your life. My punchers don't love you, and I don't know how long I can keep them from you. You're not wanted here any more than you were at the dance the other evening.”
McWilliams nodded. “That's right. Y'u better roll your trail, seh; and if y'u take my advice, you'll throw gravel lively. I seen two of the boys cutting acrost that pasture five minutes ago. They looked as if they might be haided to cut y'u off, and I allow it may be their night to howl. Miss Messiter don't want to be responsible for y'u getting lead poisoning.”
“Indeed!” Their visitor looked politely interested. “This solicitude for me is very touching. I observe that both of you are carefully blocking me from the bunkhouse in order to prevent another practice-shot. If I can't persuade you to join me in a ride, Miss Messiter, I reckon I'll go while I'm still unpunctured.” He bowed, and gathered the reins for departure.
“One moment! Mr. McWilliams and I are going with you,” the girl announced.
“Changed your mind? Think you'll take a little pasear, after all?”
“I don't want to be responsible for your killing. We'll see you safe off the place,” she answered curtly.
The foreman fell in on one side of Bannister, his mistress on the other. They rode in close formation, to lessen the chance of an ambuscade. Bannister alone chatted at his debonair ease, ignoring the responsibility they felt for his safety.
“I got my ride, after all,” he presently chuckled. “To be sure, I wasn't expecting Mr. McWilliams to chaperon us. But that's an added pleasure.”
“Would it be an added pleasure to get bumped off to kingdom come?” drawled the foreman, giving a reluctant admiration to his aplomb.
“Thinking of those willing boys of yours again, are you?” laughed Bannister. “They're ce'tainly a heap prevalent with their hardware, but their hunting don't seem to bring home any meat.”
“By the way, how IS your ankle, Mr. Bannister? I forgot to ask.” This shot from the young woman.
He enjoyed it with internal mirth. “They did happen on the target that time,” he admitted. “Oh, it's getting along fine, but I aim to do most of my walking on horseback for a while.”
They swept past the first dangerous grove of cottonwoods in safety, and rounded the boundary fence corner.
“They're in that bunch of pines over there,” said the foreman, after a single sweep of his eyes in that direction.
“Yes, I see they are. You oughtn't to let your boys wear red bandannas when they go gunning, Miss Messiter. It's an awful careless habit.”
Helen herself could see no sign of life in the group of pines, but she knew their keen, trained eyes had found what hers could not. Riding with one or another of her cowboys, she had often noticed how infallibly they could read the country for miles around. A scattered patch on a distant hillside, though it might be a half-hour's ride from them, told them a great deal more than seemed possible. To her the dark spots sifted on that slope meant scrub underbrush, if there was any meaning at all in them. But her riders could tell not only whether they were alive, but could differentiate between sheep and cattle. Indeed, McWilliams could nearly always tell whether they were HER cattle or not. He was unable to explain to her how he did it. By a sort of instinct, she supposed.
The pines were negotiated in safety, and on the part of the men with a carelessness she could not understand. For after they had passed there was a spot between her shoulder-blades that seemed to tingle in expectation of a possible bullet boring its way through. But she would have died rather than let them know how she felt.
Perhaps Bannister understood, however, for he remarked casually: “I wouldn't be ambling past so leisurely if I was riding alone. It makes a heap of difference who your company is, too. Those punchers wouldn't take a chance at me now for a million dollars.”
“No, they're some haidstrong, but they ain't plumb locoed,” agreed Mac.
Fifteen minutes later Helen drew up at the line corner. “We'll part company here, Mr. Bannister. I don't think there is any more danger from my men.”
“Before