The Best Western Novels of William MacLeod Raine. William MacLeod Raine

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.”

      “Yes, ma'am.” He looked aggrieved, thinking himself a man grown. “How did y'u say Mr. Bannister was?”

      “Wait, and I'll send Nora out to tell you,” she flashed, and disappeared in the house.

      Conversation at the bunkhouse and the chucktent sometimes circled around the young women at the house, but its personality rarely grew pronounced. References to Helen Messiter and the housemaid were usually by way of repartee at each other. For a change had come over the spirit of the Lazy D men, and, though a cheerful profanity still flowed freely when they were alone together, vulgarity was largely banished.

      The morning after his conversation with Miss Messiter, McWilliams was washing in the foreman's room when the triangle beat the call for breakfast, and he heard the cook's raucous “Come and get it.” There was the usual stampede for the tent, and a minute later Mac flung back the flap and entered. He took the seat at the head of the table, along the benches on both sides of which the punchers were plying busy knives and forks.

      “A stack of chips,” ordered the foreman; and the cook's “Coming up” was scarcely more prompt than the plate of hot cakes he set before the young man.

      “Hen fruit, sunny side up,” shouted Reddy, who was further advanced in his meal.

      “Tame that fog-horn, son,” advised Wun Hop; but presently he slid three fried eggs from a frying-pan into the plate of the hungry one.

      “I want y'u boys to finish flankin' that bunch of hill calves to-day,” said the foreman, emptying half a jug of syrup over his cakes.

“Redtop, he ain't got no appetite these days,” grinned Denver, as the gentleman mentioned cleaned up a second loaded plate of ham, eggs and fried potatoes. “I see him studying a Wind River Bible1 yesterday. Curious how in the spring a young man's fancy gits to wandering on house furnishing. Red, he was taking the catalogue alphabetically. Carpets was absorbin' his attention, chairs on deck, and chandeliers in the hole, as we used to say when we was baseball kids.”

      “Ain't a word of truth in it,” indignantly denied the assailed, his unfinished nose and chin giving him a pathetic, whipped puppy look. “Sho! I was just looking up saddles. Can't a fellow buy a new saddle without asking leave of Denver?”

      “Cyarpets used to begin with a C in my spelling-book, but saddles got off right foot fust with a S,” suggested Mac amiably.

      “He was ce'tainly trying to tree his saddle among the C's. He was looking awful loving at a Turkish rug. Reckon he thought it was a saddle-blanket,” derided Denver cheerfully.

      “Huh! Y'u're awful smart, Denver,” retaliated Reddy, his complexion matching his hair. “Y'u talk a heap with your mouth. Nobody believes a word of what y'u say.”

      Denver relaxed into a range song by way of repartee:

      “I want mighty bad to be married, To have a garden and a home; I ce'tainly aim to git married, And have a gyurl for my own.”

      “Aw! Y'u fresh guys make me tired. Y'u don't devil me a bit, not a bit. Whyfor should I care what y'u say? I guess this outfit ain't got no surcingle on me.” Nevertheless, he made a hurried end of his breakfast and flung out of the tent.

      “Y'u boys hadn't ought to wound Reddy's tender feelings, and him so bent on matrimony!” said Denver innocently. “Get a move on them fried spuds and sashay them down this way, if there's any left when y'u fill your plate, Missou.”

      Nor was Reddy the only young man who had dreams those days at the Lazy D. Cupid must have had his hands full, for his darts punctured more than one honest plainsman's heart. The reputation of the young women at the Lazy D seemed to travel on the wings of the wind, and from far and near Cattleland sent devotees to this shrine of youth and beauty. So casually the victims drifted in, always with a good business excuse warranted to endure raillery and sarcasm, that it was impossible to say they had come of set purpose to sun themselves in feminine smiles.

      As for Nora, it is not too much to say that she was having the time of her life. Detroit, Michigan, could offer no such field for her expansive charms as the Bighorn country, Wyoming. Here she might have her pick of a hundred, and every one of them picturesquely begirt with flannel shirt, knotted scarf at neck, an arsenal that bristled, and a sun-tan that could be achieved only in the outdoors of the Rockies. Certainly these knights of the saddle radiated a romance with which even her floorwalker “gentleman friend” could not compete.

1. A Wind River Bible in the Northwest ranch country is a catalogue of one of the big Chicago department stores that does a large shipping business in the West.

      Chapter 10.

       A Shepherd of the Desert

       Table of Contents

      It had been Helen Messiter's daily custom either to take a ride on her pony or a spin in her motor car, but since Bannister had been quartered at the Lazy D her time had been so fully occupied that she had given this up for the present. The arrival of Nora Darling, however, took so much work off her hands that she began to continue her rides and drives.

      Her patient was by this time so far recovered that he did not need her constant attendance and there were reasons why she decided it best to spend only a minimum of her time with him. These had to do with her increasing interest in the man and the need she felt to discourage it. It had come to a pretty pass, she told