blushed. He was still young enough to take pride in his picturesque regalia, to prefer the dramatic way of doing a commonplace thing. But, though he liked this girl's trick of laughing at him with a perfectly grave face out of those dark, long-lashed eyes, he would have liked it better if sometimes they had given back the applause he thought his little tricks merited.
“Sho! That's foolishness,” he deprecated.
“I suppose they got you to sit for this picture;” and she indicated the poster with a wave of her hand.
“That ain't a real picture,” he explained, and when she smiled added, “as of course y'u know. No hawss ever pitched that way—and the saddle ain't right. Fact is, it's all wrong.”
“How did it come here? It wasn't here last night.”
“I reckon Denver brought it from Slauson's. He was ridin' that country yesterday, and as the boys was out of smokin' he come home that way.”
“I suppose you'll all go?”
“I reckon.”
“And you'll ride?”
“I aim to sit in.”
“At the roping, too?”
“No, m'm. I ain't so much with the rope. It takes a Mexican to snake a rope.”
“Then I'll be able to borrow only a thousand dollars from you to help buy that bunch of young cows we were speaking about,” she mocked.
“Only a thousand,” he grinned. “And it ain't a cinch I'll win. There are three or four straightup riders on this range. A fellow come from the Hole-in-the-Wall and won out last year.”
“And where were you?”
“Oh, I took second prize,” he explained, with obvious indifference.
“Well, you had better get first this year. We'll have to show them the Lazy D hasn't gone to sleep.”
“Sure thing,” he agreed.
“Has that buyer from Cheyenne turned up yet?” she asked, reverting to business.
“Not yet. Do y'u want I should make the cut soon as he comes?”
“Don't you think his price is a little low—twenty dollars from brand up?”
“It's a scrub bunch. We want to get rid of them, anyway. But you're the doctor,” he concluded slangily.
She thought a moment. “We'll let him have them, but don't make the cut till I come back. I'm going to ride over to the Twin Buttes.”
His admiring eyes followed her as she went toward the pony that was waiting saddled with the rein thrown to the ground. She carried her slim, lithe figure with a grace, a lightness, that few women could have rivaled. When she had swung to the saddle, she half-turned in her seat to call an order to the foreman.
“I think, Mac, you had better run up those horses from Eagle Creek. Have Denver and Missou look after them.”
“Sure, ma'am,” he said aloud; and to himself: “She's ce'tainly a thoroughbred. Does everything well she tackles. I never saw anything like it. I'm a Chink if she doesn't run this ranch like she had been at it forty years. Same thing with her gasoline bronc. That pinto, too. He's got a bad eye for fair, but she makes him eat out of her hand. I reckon the pinto is like the rest of us—clean mashed.” He put his arms on the corral fence and grew introspective. “Blamed if I know what it is about her. 'Course she's a winner on looks, but that ain't it alone. I guess it's on account of her being such a game little gentleman. When she turns that smile loose on a fellow—well, there's sure sunshine in the air. And game—why, Ned Bannister ain't gamer himself.”
McWilliams had climbed lazily to the top board of the fence. He was an energetic youth, but he liked to do his thinking at his ease. Now, as his gaze still followed its lodestar, he suddenly slipped from his seat and ran forward, pulling the revolver from its scabbard as he ran. Into his eyes had crept a tense alertness, the shining watchfulness of the tiger ready for its spring.
The cause of the change in the foreman of the Lazy D was a simple one, and on its face innocent enough. It was merely that a stranger had swung in casually at the gate of the short stable lane, and was due to meet Miss Messiter in about ten seconds. So far good enough. A dozen travelers dropped in every day, but this particular one happened to be Ned Bannister.
From the stable door a shot rang out. Bannister ducked and shouted genially: “Try again.”
But Helen Messiter whirled her pony as on a half-dollar, and charged down on the stable.
“Who fired that shot?” she demanded, her eyes blazing.
The horse-wrangler showed embarrassment. He had found time only to lean the rifle against the wall.
“I reckon I did, ma'am. Y'u see—”
“Did you get my orders about this feud?” she interrupted crisply.
“Yes, ma'am, but—”
“Then you may call for your time. When I give my men orders I expect them to obey.”
“I wouldn't 'a' shot if I'd knowed y'u was so near him. Y'u was behind that summer kitchen,” he explained lamely.
“You only expect to obey orders when I'm in sight. Is that it?” she asked hotly, and without waiting for an answer delivered her ultimatum. “Well, I won't have it. I run this ranch as long as I am its owner. Do you understand?”
“Yes, ma'am. I hadn't ought to have did it, but when I seen Bannister it come over me I owed him a pill for the one he sent me last week down in the coulee. So I up and grabbed the rifle and let him have it.”
“Then you may up and grab your trunk for Medicine Hill. Shorty will drive you tomorrow.”
When she returned to her unexpected guest, Helen found him in conversation with McWilliams. The latter's gun had found again its holster, but his brown, graceful hand hovered close to its butt.
“Seems like a long time since the Lazy D has been honored by a visit from Mr. Bannister,” he was saying, with gentle irony.
“That's right. So I have come to make up for lost time,” came Bannister's quiet retort.
Miss Messiter did not know much about Wyoming human nature in the raw, but she had learned enough to be sure that the soft courtesy of these two youths covered a stark courage that might leap to life any moment. Wherefore she interposed.
“We'll be pleased to show you over the place, Mr. Bannister. As it happens, we are close to the hospital. Shall we begin there?”
Her cool, silken defiance earned a smile from the visitor. “All your cases doing well, ma'am?”
“It's very kind of you to ask. I suppose you take an interest because they are YOUR cases, too, in a way of speaking?”
“Mine? Indeed!”
“Yes.
