it’s merely a cowboy joke,” he said. “I bend, not to the Queen of the Outlaws, but to the Princess of the Cows!”
Her dimples vanished. She looked over his head with the barest shade of disdain in her expression.
“The joke came near to being on us,” she said. “Kid, put up your gun. A tenderfoot who has enough nerve and no more sense than to draw when you have the drop on him, you’ve hazed him enough.”
Gowan sullenly reloaded his Colt’s and replaced it in its holster.
“That’s right,” said Knowles; but he turned sharply upon the offender. “Look here, Mr. Ashton, if that’s your name–there’s still the matter of this yearling. Shooting stock in a cattle country isn’t any laughing matter.”
“But, I say,” replied the hunter, “I didn’t know it was your cow, really I didn’t.”
“Doesn’t make any difference whose brand was on the calf. Even if it had been a maverick–”
“But that’s it!” interrupted Ashton. “I didn’t see the brand–only glimpses of the beast in the chaparral. I thought it a deer until after it fell and I came up to look.”
“You shore did,” jeered Gowan. “That’s why you was hurrying to yank off the hide. No chance of proving a case on you with the brand down in Deep Cañon.”
“Indeed no,” replied Ashton, drawing a trifle closer to the girl’s stirrup. “You are quite wrong–quite. I was dressing the animal to take it to my camp. Because I had mistaken it for a deer was no reason why I should leave it to the coyotes.”
“What business you got hunting deer out of season?” questioned Knowles.
“Pardon me, but are you the game warden?” asked Ashton, with a supercilious smile.
“Never you mind about that,” rejoined the cowman. “Just you answer my question.”
Ashton shrugged, and replied in a bored tone: “I fail to see that it is any of your affair. But since you are so urgent to learn–I prefer to enjoy my sport before the rush of the open season.”
“Don’t you know it’s against the law?” exclaimed the girl.
“Ah–as to that, a trifling fine–” drawled the hunter, again shrugging.
“Humph!” grunted Knowles. “A fine might get you off for deer. Shooting stock, though, is a penitentiary offense–when the criminal is lucky enough to get into court.”
“Criminal!” repeated Ashton, flushing. “I have explained who I am. My father could buy out this entire cattle country, and never know it. I’ll do it myself, some day, and turn the whole thing into a game preserve.”
“When you do,” warned Gowan, “you’d better hunt a healthier climate.”
“What we’re concerned with now,” interposed Knowles, “is this yearling.”
“The live or the dead one, Daddy?” asked the girl, her cheeks dimpling.
“What d’you–Aw–haw! haw! haw!– The live or the dead one! Catch that, Kid? The live or the dead one! Haw! haw! haw!”
The cowman fairly roared with laughter. Neither of the young men joined in his hilarious outburst. Gowan waited, cold and unsmiling. Ashton stiffened with offended dignity.
“I told you that the shooting of the animal was unintentional,” he said. “I shall settle the affair by paying you the price usually asked for veal.”
“You will?” said the cowman, looking down at the indignant tenderfoot with a twinkle in his mirth-reddened eyes. “Well, we don’t usually sell veal on the range. But I’ll let you have this yearling at cutlet prices. Fifty dollars is the figure.”
“Why, Daddy,” interrupted the girl, “half that would be–”
“On the hoof, yes; but he’s buying dressed veal,” broke in the cowman, and he smiled grimly at the culprit. “Fifty dollars is cheap for a deer hunter who goes round shooting up the country out of season. He can take his choice–pay for his veal or make a trip to the county seat.”
“That’s talking, Mr. Knowles,” approved Gowan. “We’ll corral him at Stockchute in that little log calaboose. He’ll have a peach of a time talking the jury out of sending him up for rustling.”
“This is an outrage–rank robbery!” complained Ashton. “Of course you know I will pay rather than be inconvenienced by an interruption of my hunting.” He thrust his slender hand into his pocket, and drew it out empty.
“Dead broke!” jeered Gowan.
Ashton shrugged disdainfully. “I have money at my camp. If that is not enough to pay your blackmail, my valet has gone back to the railway with my guide for a remittance of a thousand dollars, which must have come on a week ago.”
“Your camp is at the waterhole on Dry Fork,” stated Knowles. “Saw a big smoke over there–tenderfoot’s fire. Well, it’s only five miles, and we can ride down that way. We’ll go to your camp.”
“Ye-es?” murmured Ashton, his ardent eyes on the girl. “Miss–er–Chuckie, it is superfluous to remark that I shall vastly enjoy a cross-country ride with you.”
“Oh, really!” she replied.
Heedless of her ironical tone, he turned a supercilious glance on Knowles. “Yes, and at the same time your papa and his hired man can take advantage of the opportunity to deliver my veal.”
“What’s that?” growled the cowman, flushing hotly.
But the girl burst into such a peal of laughter that his scowl relaxed to an uncertain smile.
“Well, what’s the joke, honey?” he asked.
“Oh! oh! oh!” she cried, her blue eyes glistening with mirthful tears. “Don’t you see he’s got you, Daddy? You didn’t sell him his meat on the hoof. You’ve got to dress and deliver his cutlets.”
“By–James!” vowed Gowan. “Before I’ll butcher for such a knock-kneed tenderfoot I’ll see him, in–”
“Hold your hawsses, Kid,” put in Knowles. “The joke’s on me. You go on and look for that bunch of strays, if you want to. But I’m not going to back up when Chuckie says I’m roped in.”
Gowan looked fixedly at Ashton and the girl, swore under his breath, and swung to the ground. He came down beside the calf with the waddling step of one who has lived in the saddle from early childhood. Knowles joined him, and they set to work on the calf without paying any farther heed to the tenderfoot.
Ashton, after fastidiously wiping his hands on a wisp of grass, placed his hunting knife in his belt and his rifle in its saddle sheath. He next picked up his pistol, but after a single glance at the side plate, smashed in by Gowan’s first shot, he dropped the ruined weapon and rather hurriedly mounted his pony.
The girl had faced away from the partly butchered carcass. As Ashton rode around alongside, her pony started to walk away. Instead of reining in, she glanced demurely at Ashton, and called over her shoulder: “Daddy,
