The Collected Western Classics & Adventures Novels. William MacLeod Raine
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 July 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,