The Collected Western Classics & Adventures Novels. William MacLeod Raine
“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 back 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.”
Both McWilliams and his mistress had guessed right in their surmise as to Nora Darling's popularity in the cow country. She made an immediate and pronounced hit. It was astonishing how many errands the men found to take them to “the house,” as they called the building where the mistress of the ranch dwelt. Bannister served for a time as an excellent excuse. Judging from the number of the inquiries which the men found it necessary to make as to his progress, Helen would have guessed him exceedingly popular with her riders. Having a sense of humor, she mentioned this to McWilliams one day.
He laughed, and tried to turn it into a compliment to his mistress. But she would have none of it.
“I know better, sir. They don't come here to see me. Nora is the attraction, and I have sense enough to know it. My nose is quite out of joint,” she laughed.
Mac looked with gay earnestness at the feature she had mentioned. “There's a heap of difference in noses,” he murmured, apparently apropos of nothing.
“That's another way of telling me that Nora's pug is the sweetest thing you ever saw,” she charged.
“I ain't half such a bad actor as some of the boys,” he deprecated.
“Meaning in what way?”
“The Nora Darling way.”
He pronounced her name so much as if it were a caress that his mistress laughed, and he joined in it.
“It's your fickleness that is breaking my heart, though I knew I was lost as soon as I saw your beatific look on the day you got back with Nora. The first week I came none of you could do enough for me. Now it's all Nora, darling.” She mimicked gayly his intonation.
“Well, ma'am, it's this way,” explained the foreman with a grin. “Y'u're right pleasant and friendly, but the boys have got a savvy way down deep that y'u'd shuck that friendliness awful sudden if any of them dropped around with 'Object, Matrimony' in their manner. Consequence is, they're loaded down to the ground with admiration of their boss, but they ain't presumptuous enough to expaict any more. I had notions, mebbe, I'd cut more ice, me being not afflicted with bashfulness. My notions faded, ma'am, in about a week.”
“Then Nora came?” she laughed.
“No, ma'am, they had gone glimmering long before she arrived. I was just convalescent enough to need being cheered up when she drapped in.”
“And are you cheered up yet?” his mistress asked.
He took off his dusty hat and scratched his head. “I ain't right certain, yet, ma'am. Soon as I know I'm consoled, I'll be round with an invite to the wedding.”
“That is, if you are.”
“If I am—yes. Y'u can't most always tell when they have eyes like hers.”
“You're quite an authority on the sex considering your years.”