“Forty-three, sure as shootin', except twict a week when it comes to Slauson's, and that's only twenty miles,” he assured her. “Used to be seventy-two, but the Government got busy with its rural free delivery, and now we get it right at our doors.”
“You must have big doors,” she laughed.
“All out o' doors,” he punned. “Y'u see, our house is under our hat, and like as not that's twenty miles from the ranchhouse when night falls.”
“Dear me!” She swept his graceful figure sarcastically. “And, of course, twenty miles from a brush, too.”
He laughed with deep delight at her thrust, for the warm youth in him did not ask for pointed wit on the part of a young woman so attractive and with a manner so delightfully provoking.
“I expaict I have gathered up some scenery on the journey. I'll go brush it off and get ready for supper. I'd admire to sit beside y'u and pass the butter and the hash if y'u don't object. Y'u see, I don't often meet up with ladies, and I'd ought to improve my table manners when I get a chanct with one so much older than I am and o' course so much more experienced.”
“I see you don't intend to pass any honey with the hash,” she flashed, with a glimpse of the pearls.
“DIDN'T y'u say y'u was older than me? I believe I've plumb forgot how old y'u said y'u was, Miss Darling.”
“Your memory's such a sieve it wouldn't be worth while telling you. After you've been to school a while longer maybe I'll try you again.”
“Some ladies like 'em young,” he suggested, amiably.
“But full grown,” she amended.
“Do y'u judge by my looks or my ways?” he inquired, anxiously.
“By both.”
“That's right strange,” he mused aloud. “For judging by some of your ways you're the spinster Miss Messiter was telling me about, but judging by your looks y'u're only the prettiest and sassiest twenty-year-old in Wyoming.”
And with this shot he fled, to see what transformation he could effect with the aid of a whiskbroom, a tin pan of alkali water and a roller towel.
When she met him at the supper table her first question was, “Did Miss Messiter say I was an old maid?”
“Sho! I wouldn't let that trouble me if I was y'u. A woman ain't any older than she looks. Your age don't show to speak of.”
“But did she?”
“I reckon she laid a trap for me and I shoved my paw in. She wanted to give me a pleasant surprise.”
“Oh!”
“Don't y'u grow anxious about being an old maid. There ain't any in Wyoming to speak of. If y'u like I'll tell the boys you're worried and some of them will be Johnnie-on-the-Spot. They're awful gallant, cowpunchers are.”
“Some of them may be,” she differed. “If you want to know I'm just twenty-one.”
He sawed industriously at his steak. “Y'u don't say! Just old enough to vote—like this steer was before they massacreed him.”
She gave him one look, and thereafter punished him with silence.
They left Gimlet Butte early next morning and reached the Lazy D shortly after noon on the succeeding day. McWilliams understood perfectly that strenuous competition would inevitably ensue as soon as the Lazy D beheld the attraction he had brought into their midst. Nor did he need a phrenologist to tell him that Nora was a born flirt and that her shy slant glances were meant to penetrate tough hides to tender hearts. But this did not discourage him, and he set about making his individual impression while he had her all to himself. He wasn't at all sure how deep this went, but he had the satisfaction of hearing his first name, the one she had told him she had no need of, fall tentatively from her pretty lips before the other boys caught a glimpse of her.
Shortly after his arrival at the ranch Mac went to make his report to his mistress of some business matters connected with the trip.
“I see you got back safely with the old lady,” she laughed when she caught sight of him.
His look reproached her. “Y'u said a spinster.”
“But it was you that insisted on the rheumatism. By the way, did you ask her about it?”
“We didn't get that far,” he parried.
“Oh! How far did you get?” She perched herself on the porch railing and mocked him with her friendly eyes. Her heart was light within her and she was ready for anything in the way of fun, for the doctor had just pronounced her patient out of danger if he took proper care of himself.
“About as fur as I got with y'u, ma'am,” he audaciously retorted.
“We might disagree as to how far that is,” she flung back gayly with heightened color.
“No, ma'am, I don't think we would.”
“But, gracious! You're not a Mormon. You don't want us both, do you?” she demanded, her eyes sparkling with the exhilaration of the tilt.
“Could I get either one of y'u, do y'u reckon? That's what's worrying me.”
“I see, and so you intend to keep us both on the string.”
His joyous laughter echoed hers. “I expaict y'u would call that presumption or some other dictionary word, wouldn't y'u?”
“In anybody else perhaps, but surely not in Mr. McWilliams.”
“I'm awful glad to be trotting in a class by myself.”
“And you'll let us know when you have made your mind up which of us it is to be?”
“Well, mine ain't the only mind that has to be made up,” he drawled.
She took this up gleefully. “I can't answer for Nora, but I'll jump at the chance—if you decide to give it to me.”
He laughed delightedly into the hat he was momentarily expecting to put on. “I'll mill it over a spell and let y'u know, ma'am.”
“Yes, think it over from all points of view. Of course she is prettier, but then I'm not afflicted with rheumatism and probably wouldn't flirt as much afterward. I have a good temper, too, as a rule, but then so has Nora.”
“Oh, she's prettier, is she?” With boyish audacity he grinned at her.
“What do you think?”
He shook his head. “I'll have to go to the foot of the class on that, ma'am. Give me an easier one.”
“I'll have to choose another subject then. What did you do about that bunch of Circle 66 cows you looked at on your way in?”
They discussed business for a few minutes, after which she went back to her patient and he to his work.
“Ain't she a straight-up little gentleman for fair?” the foreman asked himself in rhetorical and exuberant question, slapping his hat against his leg as he strode toward the corral. “Think of her coming at me like she did, the blamed little thoroughbred. Y'u bet she knows me down to the ground and how sudden I got over any fool notions I might a-started to get in my cocoanut. But the way she came back at me, quick as lightning and then some, pretendin' all that foolishness and knowin' all the time I'd savez the game.”
Both McWilliams and his mistress had guessed right in their surmise as to Nora Darling's popularity in the cow country. She made an immediate and pronounced hit. It was astonishing how many errands the men found to take them to “the house,” as they called the building where the mistress of the ranch dwelt. Bannister served for a time as an excellent excuse. Judging from the number of the inquiries which the men found it necessary to make as to his progress, Helen would have guessed him exceedingly popular with