but under her seeming levity he perceived a 60 change in her manner towards him immensely gratifying to his humbled self-esteem.
“At first I was just a trifle apprehensive––” He hesitated, and suddenly burst out with a candid confession––“No, not a trifle! Really, I was horribly frightened!”
This was more than the girl had hoped from him. She nodded and smiled in open approval. “You had a good right to be frightened. I don’t blame you for spurring that way. Look. It wasn’t only one shot that came close. There’s a neat hair brand on your hawss’s hip that wasn’t there yesterday.”
“Must have been the shot just before we took the bank,” said Ashton, twisting about to look at the streak cut by the bullet. “The first was the only other one that didn’t go higher.”
“But what did the man look like?” questioned Miss Isobel. “I can’t imagine who––Can it be that your guide has a grudge against you on account of his pay?”
“I wouldn’t have thought it possible before yesterday, though he was a surly fellow and inclined to be insolent.”
“All such men are apt to be with tenderfeet,” she remarked, permitting herself a half twinkle of her sweet eyes. “But I should have thought yours would have kept on going. Whatever you may have owed him, he had no right to steal your outfit. He must 61 be a real badman, if it’s true he is the party who did this shooting.”
“I shouldn’t be at all surprised,” agreed Ashton. In her concern over him she looked so charming that he would have agreed if she had told him the moon was made of green cheese.
She shook her head thoughtfully, and went on: “I can’t imagine even one of our badmen trying to murder you that way. Their usual course would be to come up to you, face to face, pick a quarrel, and beat you to it on the draw. But whoever the cowardly scoundrel is, we’ll turn out the boys, and either run him down or out of the country.”
“If it’s my guide, he probably is running already.”
“I hope so,” replied the girl.
“You do! Don’t you want him punished?” exclaimed Ashton.
“Of course, but you see I don’t want Kid to––to cut another notch on his Colt’s.”
“I must say, I cannot see how that––”
“You could if you realized how kind and good he has been to me all these years. Do you know, when I first came West, I couldn’t tell a jackrabbit from a burro. Daddy had told me that each had big ears, and I got them mixed. And actually I didn’t know the off from the nigh side of a hawss!”
“But we––er––have horses and riding-schools in the East,” put in Ashton. 62
She parried the indirect question without seeming to notice it. “You proved that yesterday, coming down from High Mesa. I felt sure I would have you pulling leather.”
“Pulling leather?” he asked. “You see, I own to my tenderfootness.”
“Grabbing your saddle to hold yourself on,” she explained. Before he could reply, she rose in her stirrups and pointed ahead with her quirt. “Look, that’s the top of the biggest haystack, up by the feed-sheds. You’ll see the buildings in half a minute.”
Unheeded by Ashton, she had guided him off to the left, away from Dry Fork, across the angle above its junction with Plum Creek. They were now coming up over the divide between the two streams. Ashton failed to locate the haystack until its two mates and the long, half-open shelter-sheds came into view.
A moment later he was looking at the horse corral and the group of log ranch houses. Below and beyond them the scattered groves of Plum Creek stretched away up across the mesa––green bouquets on the slender silver ribbon of the creek’s midsummer rill.
“Well?” she asked. “What do you think of my home?”
“Your summer home,” he suggested.
“No, my real home,” she insisted. “Auntie couldn’t be nicer or fonder than she is; but her house 63 is a residence, not a home, even to her. Anyway, here, where I have Daddy and Kid––I do so hope you and Kid will become friends.”
“Since you wish it, I shall try to do my part. But it is a matter that might take time, and––” he smiled ruefully and concluded with seeming irrelevance––“I have no home.”
She gazed at him with the look of tender motherly sympathy that he had been too distraught to really feel the previous day. “Do not say that, Mr. Ashton! Though a ranch house is hardly the kind of home to which you are accustomed, you will find that we range folks retain the old-fashioned Western ideas of hospitality.”
“My dear Miss Knowles!” he exclaimed with ardent gallantry, “the mere thought of being under the same sky with you––”
“Don’t, please,” she begged. “This is the blue sky we are under, not a stuccoed ceiling.”
“Well, I really meant it,” he protested, greatly dashed.
“Kid often says nice things to me. But he speaks with his hands,” she remarked.
“Deaf and dumb alphabet?” he queried wonderingly.
“Hardly,” she answered, dimpling under his puzzled gaze. “Actions speak louder than words, you know.” 64
“Ah!” he murmured, and his look indicated that she had given him food for thought.
They were now cantering down the long easy slope towards the ranch buildings. The girl’s quick eye perceived a horseman riding towards the ranch from one of the groves up Plum Creek.
“There’s Kid coming in,” she remarked. “He went out early this morning after a big wolf that had killed a calf. He reported last evening that he found the carcass over near the head of Plum Creek. A wolf that gets to killing calves this time of year is a pretty costly neighbor. Daddy told Kid to go out and try to get him.”
“I’m glad you didn’t let him get this calf-killer,” observed Ashton.
“Oh, as soon as we saw your tenderfoot riding togs––!” she rejoined. “Seriously, though, you must not mind if the men poke a little fun at you. Most of them are more farmhands than cowboys, but Kid will be apt to lead off. I do so want you to be agreeable to Kid. He is almost a member of the family, not a hired man.”
“I shall try to be agreeable to him,” replied Ashton, a trifle stiffly.
The puncher had seen them probably before they saw him. He was riding at a pace that brought him to the horse corral a few moments ahead of them. When they came up he nodded carelessly in response 65 to Ashton’s studiously polite greeting, “Good day, Mr. Gowan,” and turned to loosen the cinch of his saddle.
“You’ve been riding some,” remarked the girl, looking at the puncher’s heaving, lathered horse.
“Jumped that wolf––ran him,” replied Gowan, as he lifted off his saddle and deftly tossed
