Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West Part 18

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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s 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 p.r.o.nounced hit. It was astonis.h.i.+ng 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 her riders. Having a sense of humor, she mentioned this to McWilliams one day.

He laughed, and tried to turn it into a compliment to his mistress. But she would have none of it.

"I know better, sir. They don't come here to see me. Nora is the attraction, and I have sense enough to know it. My nose is quite out of joint," she laughed.

Mac looked with gay earnestness at the feature she had mentioned.

"There's a heap of difference in noses," he murmured, apparently apropos of nothing.

"That's another way of telling me that Nora's pug is the sweetest thing you ever saw," she charged.

"I ain't half such a bad actor as some of the boys," he deprecated.

"Meaning in what way?"

"The Nora Darling way."

He p.r.o.nounced her name so much as if it were a caress that his mistress laughed, and he joined in it.

"It's your fickleness that is breaking my heart, though I knew I was lost as soon as I saw your beatific look on the day you got back with Nora. The first week I came none of you could do enough for me. Now it's all Nora, darling." She mimicked gayly his intonation.

"Well, ma'am, it's this way," explained the foreman with a grin.

"Y'u're right pleasant and friendly, but the boys have got a savvy way down deep that y'u'd shuck that friendliness awful sudden if any of them dropped around with 'Object, Matrimony' in their manner. Consequence is, they're loaded down to the ground with admiration of their boss, but they ain't presumptuous enough to expaict any more. I had notions, mebbe, I'd cut more ice, me being not afflicted with bashfulness. My notions faded, ma'am, in about a week."

"Then Nora came?" she laughed.

"No, ma'am, they had gone glimmering long before she arrived. I was just convalescent enough to need being cheered up when she drapped in."

"And are you cheered up yet?" his mistress asked.

He took off his dusty hat and scratched his head. "I ain't right certain, yet, ma'am. Soon as I know I'm consoled, I'll be round with an invite to the wedding."

"That is, if you are."

"If I am--yes. Y'u can't most always tell when they have eyes like hers."

"You're quite an authority on the s.e.x considering your years."

"Yes, ma'am." He looked aggrieved, thinking himself a man grown. "How did y'u say Mr. Bannister was?"

"Wait, and I'll send Nora out to tell you," she flashed, and disappeared in the house.

Conversation at the bunkhouse and the chucktent sometimes circled around the young women at the house, but its personality rarely grew p.r.o.nounced. References to Helen Messiter and the housemaid were usually by way of repartee at each other. For a change had come over the spirit of the Lazy D men, and, though a cheerful profanity still flowed freely when they were alone together, vulgarity was largely banished.

The morning after his conversation with Miss Messiter, McWilliams was was.h.i.+ng in the foreman's room when the triangle beat the call for breakfast, and he heard the cook's raucous "Come and get it." There was the usual stampede for the tent, and a minute later Mac flung back the flap and entered. He took the seat at the head of the table, along the benches on both sides of which the punchers were plying busy knives and forks.

"A stack of chips," ordered the foreman; and the cook's "Coming up" was scarcely more prompt than the plate of hot cakes he set before the young man.

"Hen fruit, sunny side up," shouted Reddy, who was further advanced in his meal.

"Tame that fog-horn, son," advised Wun Hop; but presently he slid three fried eggs from a frying-pan into the plate of the hungry one.

"I want y'u boys to finish flankin' that bunch of hill calves to-day,"

said the foreman, emptying half a jug of syrup over his cakes.

"Redtop, he ain't got no appet.i.te these days," grinned Denver, as the gentleman mentioned cleaned up a second loaded plate of ham, eggs and fried potatoes. "I see him studying a Wind River Bible* yesterday.

Curious how in the spring a young man's fancy gits to wandering on house furnis.h.i.+ng. Red, he was taking the catalogue alphabetically. Carpets was absorbin' his attention, chairs on deck, and chandeliers in the hole, as we used to say when we was baseball kids."

[* A Wind River Bible in the Northwest ranch country is a catalogue of one of the big Chicago department stores that does a large s.h.i.+pping business in the West.]

"Ain't a word of truth in it," indignantly denied the a.s.sailed, his unfinished nose and chin giving him a pathetic, whipped puppy look.

"Sho! I was just looking up saddles. Can't a fellow buy a new saddle without asking leave of Denver?"

"Cyarpets used to begin with a C in my spelling-book, but saddles got off right foot fust with a S," suggested Mac amiably.

"He was ce'tainly trying to tree his saddle among the C's. He was looking awful loving at a Turkish rug. Reckon he thought it was a saddle-blanket," derided Denver cheerfully.

"Huh! Y'u're awful smart, Denver," retaliated Reddy, his complexion matching his hair. "Y'u talk a heap with your mouth. n.o.body believes a word of what y'u say."

Denver relaxed into a range song by way of repartee:

"I want mighty bad to be married, To have a garden and a home; I ce'tainly aim to git married, And have a gyurl for my own."