Over the Border Part 20

"Ah, _ha_! senor!"

Her mental e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n expressed on the surface only mischief. But under it a deeper feeling moved like a stir of wind through sultry heat. Was it the widow's "wind" fanning an unsuspected flame? Perhaps. At least when, looking back after they rode on, she saw the same dark gaze following, enwrapping Gordon, she was seized with sudden unhappiness.

Plainly as the day that dark gaze spoke:

"I am yours!"

After they had ridden on, out of sight, and her beast was scrambling after Gordon's up the mule trail that rose in a series of zigzag staircases, the little queer looks at his back asked a vital question.

XVII: -BUT TWENTY CANNOT MAKE HIM DRINK

When they rode in to the _rancho_ that afternoon, the "wind"-that is, Ramon-had not yet "blown in"; so there were no complications to interfere with the widow's first attempts at diagnosis of the "case."

She noticed at once that, instead of springing down and taking her and Betty in one hug according to her fas.h.i.+on, Lee swung one leg over the pommel, then sat, quietly waiting, till Gordon reached up and lifted her across to the veranda.

"Promising," she inwardly commented.

A cold shower, that followed greetings and introductions, interfered temporarily with the diagnosis, but after Lee had emerged, all pink and white and cool, and had sat down to make her toilet in the widow's bedroom, that lady pursued her investigations with the abrupt remark:

"Ramon is coming."

"Yes? Isabel too?"

An imperceptible nod marked Mrs. Mills's belief that the indifference was not a.s.sumed. She went on to mask her plot. "No, it was quite accidental. I wrote some time ago to ask just where my line ran along their eastern boundary, and Ramon replied that he would come over and show me to-day."

"Oh, I hope he does. Ramon is such a nice boy."

She was now powdering her nose. The widow made mental comment. "Never missed a dab. William Benson's a fool-though, of course, she may have changed her mind." This she proceeded to find out. "Your new man seems nice?"

"He is." Followed a long description of Gordon's night vigil with the child. She concluded with a characteristic reservation, "But-"

"But what?"

"He's been going to see Felicia at the _fonda_. Sliver took him there, one day, and he says that he has never been again. But-she's wearing his watch-fob in her bosom- Yes, yes! I know! A _peona_ will beg the shoes off any man's feet. She might easily have got it at one sitting. But-"

Her nod conveyed her feeling that, allowances having been generously made, young men whose watch-fobs are found in _peonas_' bosoms, will bear watching. "Of course that is nothing to me, and, as you say, he is very nice. I like Bull better than any of them. Dear me! why isn't he twenty years younger? Then I could marry him. Oh-"

She paused, gazing at the widow, for, though the latter was exceedingly subtle, the subtlety of one woman is plain print for another. A little smile, sudden lighting of the eye! The widow stood betrayed.

Lee jumped an enormous distance to her conclusion. "Oh, wouldn't that be just too lovely! Is it-settled?"

The widow, of course, shook her head.

"But it will be."

"How do you know?" She was quite willing to be convinced.

"How do I know?" The words issued, delicately scented, from dabs of powder. "Just as if it depended on _him_. Just as if any woman-who hasn't a harelip-can't marry any man she wants."

Thus turned, in a twinkling, from a diagnostician into a "case," Mrs.

Mills tried to cover her confusion with a little laugh. But it was so self-conscious she might as well have made oral confession. Being an honest person, she owned up with a hug.

Meanwhile, having been captured by Betty as he emerged from his bedroom dressed and refreshed by a cooling shower, Gordon was being subjected to an equally keen if less discreet examination.

Betty's major premise agreed marvelously with Lee's and was stated with the startling directness of childhood after a prolonged survey of the subject from different distances and points of view. "I like you-only not so well as Bull. You're nicer-looking, but-" A long pause emphasized more powerfully than words how woefully he fell short in other ways.

"I'm going to marry him when I grow up-that is, if mother doesn't beat me to it!"

"Any danger of that?" Gordon laughed.

"You bet there is. Bull's dead in love with her, and she-of course, she doesn't admit it, but _I know_."

"Well, well, isn't that fine!" Gordon really meant it. "Congratulations, I suppose, are not yet in order."

"I should say _not_!" Betty's blue eyes widened with horror. "Don't you _dare_! I'm not too big, yet, to be spanked"-she wriggled, reminiscently-"and when mother's real mad she goes the limit.

Nevertheless, it's true." After a second calculating survey, she concluded, "But if she grabs Bull, I _might_ marry you."

"If you only will," he pleaded, "I'll be _so-o_ good! Can't we consider ourselves engaged?"

After a moment's thought she doubtfully shook her blond head. "No, I'm afraid not."

"Why?"

"Because."

"Because doesn't answer anything. If you reject me, I must know why."

"Because I'd only be disappointed again." She added, with a little sigh: "All the nice men are sure to be married before I grow up. You'll fall in love with Lee."

"_I?_ With _Lee_?" His real surprise showed how little that contingency had occurred in his thought. Curiosity mingled with a touch of apprehension colored his accent. "Now how do you figure that?"

"Because you'd be a fool if you didn't."

The answer, in its dread plainness, caused him to stare. "But-but, you know, I am only her hired man?"

"That wouldn't count-if she liked you." After another examination: "And she might do worse. _Gee!_ if I were only a man!"

"Yes?" he prompted. "If you were a man?"

"I'd love her so hard she'd just have to give in. I'd-"

But further revelations were just then cut off. Back in the bedroom her mother had remembered the possibilities of that small, frank tongue.

Answering her call, Betty ran off, leaving Gordon, however, with plentiful food for thought.

During the last two months he had seen Lee-riding the range, a pretty lad; presiding at meals, a still prettier girl, excessively feminine in her care for himself and the Three; mothering her brown retainers; a girl clean of mind, clear-eyed, wholesome as a breath of wind off the sage. Yet, somehow, she had not stirred his pulses. He acknowledged it with a touch of shame. What the deuce could be the matter? Was there something wrong with his head?

Presently he gained an inkling-he had been wearing another's colors! She whom adventure claims has eyes for none else. The color and romance of this land had fired his imagination, opened a whole world to his view.