The Bad Man Part 5

By this time Lucia was smiling too. She went over and shook her finger gently in the invalid's face. "You're cross just because you're hungry!"

"I ain't neither!" Smith replied, like a little boy.

"Yes, you are!" Lucia kept on.

"I ain't!"

"Uh, uh!" she teased him, as though she were playing with a baby.

Smith grew peevish. "Gol darn it, I tell you I ain't!" And he gave his chair a rapid twirl.

"Boo!" came from Lucia softly. She laughed, and ran up the tiny stone stairs that led to her room.

"Boo, yourself!" called out Uncle Henry, determined to have the last word, as Lucia disappeared. Then he turned querulously on his nephew, as soon as he was certain she was out of hearing. "Why did you ever invite 'em to stay here in the first place?" he wanted to know. The sound of "Red's" harmonica was heard outside.

"Because there was no decent hotel anywhere near. I couldn't do less than offer them what little hospitality I had, could I, when Sturgis suggested it?"

But his uncle didn't agree with him at all. "You could have done a whole lot less," he decided. "You could have invited 'em to keep on going. Comin'

here at a time like this, and not only eatin' us out of house and home, but drinkin' up the last bottle of liquor in the world!" This seemed to him the culminating tragedy. When his nephew said nothing at all, he asked, petulantly, "Well, what are you going to do? That's what I want to know."

"What can I do?"

"Do you mean to say you're going to set here and get throwed out into the street and not even try to do something?"

Gilbert merely shrugged his shoulders.

"Well, of all the--" his Uncle Henry went on. "It's a darn good thing for you that I'm an invalid! That's all I got to say!" He wheeled about, and aimed at the door that led to the open air. At that instant "Red" Giddings, the husky young foreman, appeared directly in his path, his shock of fiery hair like an aureole about his head. "Git out o' my way!" Uncle Henry yelled. "Gol darn the gol darn luck, anyhow!"

And through years of practice he shot into the yard as straight as an arrow.

CHAPTER IV

WHEREIN "RED" REVEALS HIS HEART, AND MRS. QUINN GIVES HIM GOOD COFFEE AND GOOD ADVICE

"Red" Giddings had been on the ranch with Gilbert since the very beginning.

He came from the North with the young man, willing to stake all on this one venture. Like young Jones, he was not afraid. He was an efficient, well-set-up young fellow, with three consuming pa.s.sions: Arizona, his harmonica, and Angela Hardy. The first saw a lot of "Red"; the second touched his lips frequently; but as for Angela--well, perhaps the poor boy kissed his harmonica so often in order to forget her lips. But if his own music charmed "Red," it failed to have that effect upon others--particularly Uncle Henry, who went into a rage whenever he heard the detested instrument. "Red's" music had no charms to soothe the savage breast of Henry Smith.

But another did like it. Angela once told "Red" in the moonlight--and her father had never forgiven her for her foolishness--that his harmonica never wearied her. That was enough for "Red." Once every day he managed to find some excuse to get over to the Hardy ranch; and always his beloved instrument went along with him in his pocket, and he would approach his lady love's castle like the troubadours of old, his foot tapping on the path while his harmonica, in the place of a lute, made soft sounds.

Instantly Angela would poke her pretty head from the window, and pretend that she was a princess in distress, and he her knight who had come to release her from her prison.

Moreover, the Hardys had a wonderful cook--a woman they had brought down from Phoenix. Instead of the firecracker stuff that Uncle Henry so bitterly complained of, she, being an Irish woman, could concoct a stew that would make one's hair curl; and her pastry was succulent and sweet, and literally melted in the mouth. Her coffee--ah! who could make better coffee? And as the meals at the Jones ranch were served sporadically, and "Red" was as healthy as a peasant and had never known the time when he couldn't tuck away some dainty from the kitchen he ingratiated himself with Mrs. Quinn, quite won her heart, too, with his music, and was even known to desert his work for the boon of a bit of pie.

When she was suffering from the heat of the stove, and was ready to throw up her job and return to the bright lights of Phoenix, "Red" invariably came around to the door with music on his lips, his shock of hair blown by the soft wind, looking so boyish that she had to succ.u.mb to him, boil another pot of coffee, and lay a place for him at the corner of the table.

"Be off wid yez!" she always began by saying. But the insinuating harmonica was his only reply; and she ended by begging him to come in and play for her while she messed with the pots and pans, and maybe found some batter for a plate of griddle cakes.

On this particular morning, work being useless since things were going so badly for Jones, "Red" slipped up the road and reached the kitchen door just as Mrs. Quinn was was.h.i.+ng up.

"Oh, so there ye be, me boy!" was her motherly greeting. "Come in, an'

maybe--who knows?--I'll find a cup o' coffee fer ye, though I'm not thinkin' ye deserve it."

"Red" loved the odors from this fragrant kitchen. The stove always gleamed, and when Mrs. Quinn was in good humor she was like a great light moving here and there, dispensing warmth also. She was a monstrous woman; but like many large people, she got about easily and swiftly. Her capable hands were forever fluttering in the flour-barrel or over the dough-board, and her ruddy cheeks and honest gray eyes spoke of health and good nature.

She adored Angela; and she really liked "Red" tremendously, and hoped in the end he would win the difficult and fickle girl. But, like Angela, she had moment when she could have shaken him. For "Red" didn't fight hard enough for what he wanted. He was nave to the point of stupidity at times; and women like aggressive men--even men who are capable of flogging them into submission, deny it as they will. "Red" was gentle and mild, though thoroughly manly. Both Angela and Mrs. Quinn would have liked to see him live up to his fiery hair.

He beamed now at the genial cook's greeting, and took out his harmonica, running over the full scale as a suitable answer.

"Here, sit ye down, 'Red,'" Mrs. Quinn ordered. "But first see that yer feet is wiped off. I don't want to see no dirt along me clean floor."

She was busy with a place for him near the window, happy, as most women are, to serve a handsome young chap, and secretly wis.h.i.+ng in her heart that she had him for a son.

The coffee was miraculously brought, and soon the griddle-cakes, gloriously brown, and deftly turned by Mrs. Quinn, were in front of him.

"Gee! you make a feller happy, Mrs. Quinn!" said the appreciative "Red,"

sitting down, and getting busy, "Won't you come to Bisbee with Angela an'

me the next time we go to the movies?"

She gave him a half-scornful look. "An' what would yez want with an old woman like meself taggin' along with yez now?" Mrs. Quinn exclaimed, her arms akimbo. "Ain't ye happy enough with yer Angela, an' no fat funeral like me occupyin' too much room in the Ford? Go along, me lad, an' have a good time with yer colleen! She'd like it better alone with ye, too--be sure o' that!"

"Of course I would!"

They hadn't seen Angela come in. She stood in the doorway like a vision--a morning-glory from which the freshness of the early hours never seemed to depart.

"Oh!" poor "Red" gasped, and leaped to his feet. "Would you, Angela?" He looked at her, drank her beauty in, as though she were the only creature on this earth.

"Certainly!" said Angela, coming over to him. "You're a b.o.o.b, 'Red,' and if you don't look out, there's a fellow over at Bisbee who--"

"Oh!" the anguished "Red" managed to get out. "_Is_ there, Angy?"

There was--of course there was--and there wasn't. Angela knew just how far to go. Her black eyes danced. "Red" sat down again, after she had shoved him back to his late breakfast. Mrs. Quinn, amused, was busy with some more cakes, though "Red" had scarcely had time to begin the first batch. But she knew his capacity, and she felt he would need sustaining food after Angela's last remark.

"You don't always wave to me like you did the other day when I went by,"

said "Red," his lips in Mrs. Quinn's golden coffee.

"Why should I?" said Angela. "You don't always have such swell-looking folks with you!"

"Oh, so that's why you waved!" disappointment in his tone.

"Maybe." She was teasing him, but he didn't know it. "Who were they?"

"A Mr. and Mrs. Pell, from New York. They're lookin' over property round here.... But I don't care, Angy. Even if I had to go to Bisbee four times a day and get some good-lookin' folks to bring down the road, I'd do it if you'd wave to me! Oh, why can't you always be nice to me?"

"If I was always nice to you, you wouldn't know how lucky you are!" she countered. "It's good for you to have your bad days--with me."

"Well, maybe you're right. You're 'most always right; but gos.h.!.+ a feller does like a little encouragement once in a while. You can be so cruel, Angy!"