She was of those women who have the heavenborn faculty of making home of such fortuitous elements as are to their hands. Except her piano and such knickknacks as she had brought in a single trunk she had had to depend upon the resources of the establishment to which she had come, but it is wonderful how much can be done with some Navajo rugs, a bearskin, a few bits of Indian pottery and woven baskets and a judicious arrangement of scenic photographs. In a few days she would have her pictures from Kalamazoo, pending which her touch had transformed the big living room from a cheerless barn into a spot that was a comfort to the eye and heart. To the wounded man who lay there slowly renewing the blood he had lost the room was the apotheosis of home, less, perhaps, by reason of what it was in itself than because it was the setting for her presence—for her grave, sympathetic eyes, the sound of her clear voice, the light grace of her motion. He rejoiced in the delightful intimacy the circumstances made necessary. To hear snatches of joyous song and gay laughter even from a distance, to watch her as she came in and out on her daily tasks, to contest her opinions of books and life and see how eagerly she defended them; he wondered himself at the strength of the appeal these simple things made to him. Already he was dreading the day when he must mount his horse and ride back into the turbulent life from which she had for a time, snatched him.
"I'll hate to go back to sheepherding," he told her one day at lunch, looking at her across a snow-white tablecloth upon which were a service of shining silver, fragile china teacups and plates stamped Limoges.
He was at the moment buttering a delicious French roll and she was daintily pouring tea from an old family heirloom. The contrast between this and the dust and the grease of a midday meal at the end of a "chuck wagon" lent accent to his smiling lamentation.
"A lot of sheepherding you do," she derided.
"A shepherd has to look after his sheep, y'u know."
"You herd sheep just about as much as I punch cows."
"I have to herd my herders, anyhow, and that keeps me on the move."
"I'm glad there isn't going to be any more trouble between you and the Lazy D. And that reminds me of another thing. I've often wonered who those men could have been that attacked you the day you were hurt."
She had asked the question almost carelessly, without any thought that this might be something he wished to conceal, but she recognized her mistake by the wariness that filmed his eyes instantly.
"Room there for a right interesting guessing contest," he replied.
"You wouldn't need to guess," she charged, on swift impulse.
"Meaning that I know?"
"You do know. You can't deny that you now."
"Well, say that I know?"
"Aren't you going to tell?"
He shook his head. "Not just yet. I've got private reasons for keeping it quiet a while."
"I'm sure they are creditable to you," came her swift ironic retort.
"Sure," he agreed, whimsically. "I must live up to the professional standard. Honor among thieves, y'u know."
CHAPTER 9. MISS DARLING ARRIVES
Miss Messiter clung to civilization enough, at least, to prefer that her chambermaid should be a woman rather than a Chinese. It did not suit her preconceived idea of the proper thing that Lee Ming should sweep floors, dust bric-a-brac, and make the beds. To see him slosh-sloshing around in his felt slippers made her homesick for Kalamazoo. There were other reasons why the proprieties would be better served by having another woman about the place; reasons that had to do with the chaperone system that even in the uncombed West make its claims upon unmarried young women of respectability. She had with her for the present fourteen-year-old Ida Henderson, but this arrangement was merely temporary.
Wherefore on the morning after her arrival Helen had sent two letters back to "the States." One of these had been to Mrs. Winslow, a widow of fifty-five, inviting her to come out on a business basis as housekeeper of the Lazy D. The buxom widow had loved Helen since she had been a toddling baby, and her reply was immediate and enthusiastic. Eight days later she had reported in person. The second letter bore the affectionate address of Nora Darling, Detroit, Michigan. This also in time bore fruit at the ranch in a manner worthy of special mention.
It was the fourth day after Ned Bannister had been carried back to the Lazy D that Helen Messiter came out to the porch of the house with a letter in her hand. She found her foreman sitting on the steps waiting for her, but he got up as soon as he heard the fall of her light footsteps behind him.
"You sent for me, ma'am?" he asked, hat in hand.
"Yes; I want you to drive into Gimlet Butte and bring back a person whom you'll find at the Elk House waiting for you. I had rather you would go yourself, because I know you're reliable."
"Thank you, ma'am. How will I know him?"
"It's a woman—a spinster. She's coming to help Mrs. Winslow. Inquire for Miss Darling. She isn't used to jolting two days in a rig, but I know you will be careful of her."
"I'll surely be as careful of the old lady as if she was my own mother."
The mistress of the ranch smothered a desire to laugh.
"I'm sure you will. At her age she may need a good deal of care. Be certain you take rug enough."
"I'll take care of her the best I know how. Expect she's likely rheumatic, but I'll wrop her up till she looks like a Cheyenne squaw when tourist is trying to get a free shoot at her with camera."
"Please do. I want her to get a good impression of Wyoming so that she will stay. I don' know about the rheumatism, but you might ask her."
There were pinpoints of merriment behind the guileless innocence of her eyes, but they came to the surface only after the foreman had departed.
McWilliams ordered a team of young horse hitched, and presently set out on his two day; journey to Gimlet Butte. He reached that town in good season, left the team at a corral and walked back to the Elk House. The white dust of the plains was heavy on him, from the bandanna that loosely embraced the brown throat above the flannel shirt to the encrusted boots but through it the good humor of his tanned face smiled fraternally on a young woman he passes at the entrance to the hotel. Her gay smile met his cordially, and she was still in his mind while he ran his eye down the register in search of the name he wanted. There it was—Miss Nora Darling, Detroit, Michigan—in the neatest of little round letters, under date of the previous day's arrivals.
"Is Miss Darling in?" asked McWilliams of the half-grown son of the landlady who served in lieu of clerk and porter.
"Nope! Went out a little while ago. Said to tell anybody to wait that asked for her."
Mac nodded, relieved to find that duty had postponed itself long enough for him to pursue the friendly smile that had not been wasted on him a few seconds before. He strolled out to the porch and decided at once that he needed a cigar more than anything else on earth. He was helped to a realization of his need by seeing the owner of the smile disappear in an adjoining drug store.
She was beginning on a nut sundae when the puncher drifted in. She continued to devote even her eyes to its consumption, while the foreman opened a casual conversation with the drug clerk and lit his cigar.
"How are things coming in Gimlet Butte?" he asked, by way of prolonging his stay rather than out of desire for information.
Yes, she certainly had the longest, softest lashes he had ever seen, and the ripest of cherry lips, behind the smiling depths of which sparkled two rows of tiny pearls. He wished she would look at HIM and smile again. There wasn't any use trying to melt a sundae with it, anyhow.
"Sure, it's a good year on the range and the price of cows jumping," he heard his sub-conscious self make answer to the patronizing inquiries of him of the "boiled" shirt.
"Funny how pretty hair of that color was especially when there was so much of it. You might call it a sort of coppery gold where the little curls escaped in tendrils and ran wild. A fellow—"
"Yes, I reckon most of the boys will drop around to the Fourth of Jul
y celebration. Got to cut loose once in a while, y'u know."
A shy glance shot him and set him a-tingle with a queer delight. Gracious, what pretty dark velvety lashes she had!
She was rising already, and as she paid for the ice cream that innocent gaze smote him again with the brightest of Irish eyes conceivable. It lingered for just a ponderable sunlit moment or him. She had smiled once more.
After a decent interval Mac pursued his petit charmer to the hotel. She was seated on the porch reading a magazine, and was absorbedly unconscious of him when he passed. For a few awkward moments he hung around the office, then returned to the porch and took the chair most distant from her. He had sat there a long ten minutes before she let her hands and the magazine fall into her lap and demurely gave him his chance.
"Can you tell me how far it is to the Lazy D ranch?"
"Seventy-two miles as the crow flies, ma'am."
"Thank you."
The conversation threatened to die before it was well born. Desperately McWilliams tried to think of something to say to keep it alive without being too bold.
"If y'u were thinking of traveling out that way I could give y'u a lift. I just came in to get another lady—an old lady that has just come to this country."
"Thank you, but I'm expecting a conveyance to meet me here. You didn't happen to pass one on the way, I suppose?"
"No, I didn't. What ranch were y'u going to, ma'am?
"Miss Messiter's—the Lazy D."
A suspicion began to penetrate the foreman's brain. "Y'u ain't Miss Darling?"
"What makes you so sure I'm not?" she asked, tilting her dimpled chin toward him aggressively.
"Y'u're too young," he protested, helplessly.
"I'm no younger than you are," came her quick, indignant retort.
Thus boldly accused of his youth, the foreman blushed. "I didn't mean that. Miss Messiter said she was an old lady—"
"You needn't tell fibs about it. She couldn't have said anything of the kind. Who are you, anyhow?" the girl demanded, with spirit.
"I'm the foreman of the Lazy D, come to get Miss Darling. My name is McWilliams—Jim McWilliams."
"I don't need your first name, Mr. McWilliams," she assured him, sweetly. "And will you please tell me why you have kept me waiting here more than thirty hours?"
"Miss Messiter didn't get your letter in time. Y'u see, we don't get mail every day at the Lazy D," he explained, the while he hopefully wondered just when she was going to need his last name.
"I don't see why you don't go after your mail every day at least, especially when Miss Messiter was expecting me. To leave me waiting here thirty hours—I'll not stand it. When does the next train leave for Detroit?" she asked, imperiously.
The situation seemed to call for diplomacy, and Jim McWilliams moved to a nearer chair. "I'm right sorry it happened, ma'am, and I'll bet Miss Messiter is, too. Y'u see, we been awful busy one way and 'nother, and I plumb neglected to send one of the boys to the post-office."
"Why didn't one of them walk over after supper?" she demanded, severely.
He curbed the smile that was twitching at his facial muscles.
"Well, o' course it ain't so far,—only forty-three miles—still—"
"Forty-three miles to the post-office?"
"Yes, ma'am, only forty-three. If you'll excuse me this time—"
"Is it really forty-three?"
He saw that her sudden smile had brought out the dimples in the oval face and that her petulance had been swept away by his astounding information.
"Forty-three, sure as shootin', except twict a week when it comes to Slauson's, and that's only twenty miles," he assured her. "Used to be seventy-two, but the Government got busy with its rural free delivery, and now we get it right at our doors."
"You must have big doors," she laughed.
"All out o' doors," he punned. "Y'u see, our house is under our hat, and like as not that's twenty miles from the ranchhouse when night falls."
"Dear me!" She swept his graceful figure sarcastically. "And, of course, twenty miles from a brush, too."
He laughed with deep delight at her thrust, for the warm youth in him did not ask for pointed wit on the part of a young woman so attractive and with a manner so delightfully provoking.
"I expaict I have gathered up some scenery on the journey. I'll go brush it off and get ready for supper. I'd admire to sit beside y'u and pass the butter and the hash if y'u don't object. Y'u see, I don't often meet up with ladies, and I'd ought to improve my table manners when I get a chanct with one so much older than I am and o' course so much more experienced."
"I see you don't intend to pass any honey with the hash," she flashed, with a glimpse of the pearls.
"DIDN'T y'u say y'u was older than me? I believe I've plumb forgot how old y'u said y'u was, Miss Darling."
"Your memory's such a sieve it wouldn't be worth while telling you. After you've been to school a while longer maybe I'll try you again."
"Some ladies like 'em young," he suggested, amiably.
"But full grown," she amended.
"Do y'u judge by my looks or my ways?" he inquired, anxiously.
"By both."
"That's right strange," he mused aloud. "For judging by some of your ways you're the spinster Miss Messiter was telling me about, but judging by your looks y'u're only the prettiest and sassiest twenty-year-old in Wyoming."
And with this shot he fled, to see what transformation he could effect with the aid of a whiskbroom, a tin pan of alkali water and a roller towel.
When she met him at the supper table her first question was, "Did Miss Messiter say I was an old maid?"
"Sho! I wouldn't let that trouble me if I was y'u. A woman ain't any older than she looks. Your age don't show to speak of."
"But did she?"
"I reckon she laid a trap for me and I shoved my paw in. She wanted to give me a pleasant surprise."
"Oh!"
"Don't y'u grow anxious about being an old maid. There ain't any in Wyoming to speak of. If y'u like I'll tell the boys you're worried and some of them will be Johnnie-on-the-Spot. They're awful gallant, cowpunchers are."
"Some of them may be," she differed. "If you want to know I'm just twenty-one."
He sawed industriously at his steak. "Y'u don't say! Just old enough to vote—like this steer was before they massacreed him."
She gave him one look, and thereafter punished him with silence.
They left Gimlet Butte early next morning and reached the Lazy D shortly after noon on the succeeding day. McWilliams understood perfectly that strenuous competition would inevitably ensue as soon as the Lazy D beheld the attraction he had brought into their midst. Nor did he need a phrenologist to tell him that Nora was a born flirt and that her shy slant glances were meant to penetrate tough hides to tender hearts. But this did not discourage him, and he set about making his individual impression while he had her all to himself. He wasn't at all sure how deep this went, but he had the satisfaction of hearing his first name, the one she had told him she had no need of, fall tentatively from her pretty lips before the other boys caught a glimpse of her.
Shortly after his arrival at the ranch Mac went to make his report to his mistress of some business matters connected with the trip.
"I see you got back safely with the old lady," she laughed when she caught sight of him.
His look reproached her. "Y'u said a spinster."
"But it was you that insisted on the rheumatism. By the way, did you ask her about it?"
"We didn't get that far," he parried.
"Oh! How far did you get?" She perched herself on the porch railing and mocked him with her friendly eyes. Her heart was light within her and she was ready for anything in the way of fun, for the doctor had just pronounced her patient out of danger if he took proper care of himself.
"About as fur as I got with y'u, ma'am," he audaciously retorted.
"We might disagree as to how far that is," she flung b
ack gayly with heightened color.
"No, ma'am, I don't think we would."
"But, gracious! You're not a Mormon. You don't want us both, do you?" she demanded, her eyes sparkling with the exhilaration of the tilt.
"Could I get either one of y'u, do y'u reckon? That's what's worrying me."
"I see, and so you intend to keep us both on the string."
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 class 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 class 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."
Wyoming-a Story of the Outdoor West Page 8