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An electrical undercurrent of expectation pervaded the very atmosphere of Flying U ranch. The musicians, two supercilious but undeniably efficient young men from Great Falls, had arrived two hours before and were being graciously entertained by the Little Doctor up at the house. The sandwiches stood waiting, the coffee was ready for the boiling water, and the dining-room floor was smooth as wax could make it.
For some reason unknown to himself, Chip was “in the deeps.” He even threatened to stop in the bunk house and said he didn’t feel like dancing, but was brought into line by weight of numbers. He hated Dick Brown, anyway, for his cute, little yellow mustache that curled up at the ends like the tail of a drake. He had snubbed him all the way out from town and handled Dick’s guitar with a recklessness that invited disaster. And the way Dick smirked when the Old Man introduced him to the Little Doctor—a girl with a fellow in the East oughtn’t to let her eyes smile that way at a pin-headed little dude like Dick Brown, anyway. And he—Chip—had given, her a letter postmarked blatantly: “Gilroy, Ohio, 10:30 P. M.”—and she had been so taken up with those cussed musicians that she couldn’t even thank him, and only just glanced at the letter before she stuck it inside her belt. Probably she wouldn’t even read it till after the dance. He wondered if Dr. Cecil Granthum cared—oh, hell! Of COURSE he cared—that is, if he had any sense at all. But the Little Doctor—she wasn’t above flirting, he noticed. If HE ever fell in love with a girl—which the Lord forbid—he’d take mighty good care she didn’t get time to make dimples and smiles for some other fellow to go to heaven looking at.
There, that was her, laughing like she always laughed—it reminded him of pines nodding in a canyon and looking wise and whispering things they’d seen and heard before you were born, and of water falling over rocks, somehow. Queer, maybe—but it did. He wondered if Dick Brown had been trying to say something funny. He didn’t see, for the life of him, how the Little Doctor could laugh at that little imitation man. Girls are—well, they’re easy pleased, most of them.
Down in the bunk house the boys were hurrying into their “war togs”—which is, being interpreted, their best clothes. There was a nervous scramble over the cracked piece of a bar mirror—which had a history—and cries of “Get out!” “Let me there a minute, can’t yuh?” and “Get up off my coat!” were painfully frequent.
Happy Jack struggled blindly with a refractory red tie, which his face rivaled in hue and sheen—for he had been generous of soap.
Weary had possessed himself of the glass and was shaving as leisurely as though four restive cow-punchers were not waiting anxiously their turn.
“For the Lord’s sake, Weary!” spluttered Jack Bates. “Your whiskers grow faster’n you can shave ‘em off, at that gait. Get a move on, can’t yuh?”
Weary turned his belathered face sweetly upon Jack. “Getting in a hurry, Jacky? YOUR girl won’t be there, and nobody else’s girl is going to have time to see whether you shaved to-day or last Christmas. You don’t want to worry so much about your looks, none of you. I hate to say it, but you act vain, all of you kids. Honest, I’m ashamed. Look at that gaudy countenance Happy’s got on—and his necktie’s most as bad.” He stropped his razor with exasperating nicety, stopping now and then to test its edge upon a hair from his own brown head.
Happy Jack, grown desperate over his tie and purple over Weary’s remarks, craned his neck over the shoulder of that gentleman and leered into the mirror. When Happy liked, he could contort his naturally plain features into a diabolical grin which sent prickly waves creeping along the spine of the beholder.
Weary looked, stared, half rose from his chair.
“Holy smithereens! Quit it, Happy! You look like the devil by lightning.”
Happy, watching, seized the hand that held the razor; Cal, like a cat, pounced upon the mirror, and Jack Bates deftly wrenched the razor from Weary’s fingers.
“Whoopee, boys! Some of you tie Weary down and set on him while I shave,” cried Cal, jubilant over the mutiny. “We’ll make short work of this toilet business.”
Whereupon Weary was borne to the floor, bound hand and foot with silk handkerchiefs, carried bodily and laid upon his bed.
“Oh, the things I won’t do to you for this!” he asserted, darkly. “There won’t nary a son-of-a-gun uh yuh get a dance from my little schoolma’am—you’ll see!” He grinned prophetically, closed his eyes and murmured: “Call me early, mother dear,” and straightway fell away into slumber and peaceful snoring, while the lather dried upon his face.
“Better turn Weary loose and wake him up, Chip,” suggested Jack Bates, half an hour later, shoving the stopper into his cologne bottle and making for the door. “At the rate the rigs are rolling in, it’ll take us all to put up the teams.” The door slammed behind him as it had done behind the others as they hurried away.
“Here!” Chip untied Weary’s hands and feet and took him by the shoulder. “Wake up, Willie, if you want to be Queen o’ the May.”
Weary sat up and rubbed his eyes. “Confound them two Jacks! What time is it?”
“A little after eight. YOUR crowd hasn’t, come yet, so you needn’t worry. I’m not going up yet for a while, myself.”
“You’re off your feed. Brace up and take all there is going, my son.” Weary prepared to finish his interrupted beautification.
“I’m going to—all the bottles, that is. If that Dry Lake gang comes loaded down with whisky, like they generally do, we ought to get hold of it and cache every drop, Weary.”
Weary turned clear around to stare his astonishment.
“When did the W. C. T. U. get you by the collar?” he demanded.
“Aw, don’t be a fool, Weary,” retorted Chip. “You can see it wouldn’t look right for us to let any of the boys get full, or even half shot, seeing this is the Little Doctor’s dance.”
Weary meditatively scraped his left jaw and wiped the lather from the razor upon a fragment of newspaper.
“Splinter, we’ve throwed in together ever since we drifted onto the same range, and I’m with you, uh course. But—don’t overlook Dr. Cecil Granthum. I’d hate like the devil to see you git throwed down, because it’d hurt you worse than anybody I know.”
Chip calmly sifted some tobacco into a cigarette paper. His mouth was very straight and his brows very close together.
“It’s a devilish good thing it was YOU said that, Weary. If it had been anyone else I’d punch his face for him.”
“Why, yes—an’ I’d help you, too.” Weary, his mouth very much on one side of his face that he might the easier shave the other, spoke in fragments. “You don’t take it amiss from—me, though. I can see—”
The door slammed with extreme violence, and Weary slashed his chin unbecomingly in consequence, but he felt no resentment toward Chip. He calmly stuck a bit of paper on the cut to stop the bleeding and continued to shave.
A short time after, the Little Doctor came across Chip glaring at Dick Brown, who was strumming his guitar with ostentatious ease upon an inverted dry-goods box at one end of the long dining room.
“I came to ask a favor of you,”
