He walked through into the kitchen and drank a dipperful of water thirstily, before he answered. Returning, he grinned significantly at his hostess.
"All right, let it go at that, Mrs. Trainor," he replied. "Here, Gwyn!"
he continued, slewing around and catching hold of that little blonde seven-year-old fairy, "where"s Miss O"Malley?"
"Shan"t tell you!" came the mutinous giggle.
"Oh, yes, you will," he said, tickling her. "Come on, now; you tell, or I"ll-I"ll take you out and put you right on top of the barn for that big sparrow-hawk to come and get! He likes little girls like you. One!
Two!-are you going to tell me-?"
"Yes, yes!" came the smothered squawk. "Pu-put me down, though.
She-she"s drying her hair in the sun back of the house," she whispered gravely.
"Is she? Well, you go and tell her I want her," he whispered back. "Run like anything."
"Oh, she"ll come quick enough when she knows you"ve got Johnny for her to ride," remarked Trainor, smiling. "She won"t look at that Pedro horse of mine so long as _he"s_ around. Say!" he broke off. "Bert"s sure getting to be some marksman, ain"t he? He"ll be running you pretty close when he gets older, Sergeant. Look at that, now!"
These remarks were occasioned by the entrance of a st.u.r.dy youngster of nine, who was proudly dangling the carca.s.ses of half a dozen fat gophers.
"No, no, Bert! You mustn"t bring them in here!" cried his mother sharply. "Take them outside and give them to Tom and Jerry!"
Hugging a small "twenty-two" rifle and his dead gophers, the boy gave a roguish grin at Ellis and departed, followed by two huge mewing tomcats.
"Little brutes were just ruining the garden," said Trainor, "so I put Bert onto them. He"s just having the time of his life with that new gun I bought him."
Ellis, seating himself at the piano with an a.s.surance that bespoke long familiarity in that kindly, homelike household, began to idly strum.
"Come, La.s.ses and Lads," with a whistling accompaniment. Suddenly a shadow darkened the open door, and a mischievous voice greeted him with:
"h.e.l.lo, "Mancatcher"! What brings you here this late along? We"d begun to think something had happened to you."
With her great, shimmering, glorious ma.s.s of glossy black hair rippling and tumbling about her teasing, slightly sunburnt face, Mary looked like a girl of eighteen. And as she stood there, with her superb figure drawn up to its full height, she made a picture that aroused the Sergeant"s slumbering pa.s.sion anew with increased fervor.
But his well-trained visage and voice evinced nothing of his feelings as he returned her pleasantry with, an answering careless:
"Why, h.e.l.lo, "Mousetrap"! Comin" for a ride?"
Mrs. Trainor exploded with bubbling mirth.
"Why, why! whatever new nicknames are these? You two"ll be forgetting what your real names are altogether soon. I never heard such nonsense."
"It isn"t, Mrs. Trainor," said Ellis aggrievedly. "It"s just _that_-mice! I found her busy catching "em in one of the oat bins in the stable the other day. She just catches and plays with "em-lets "em run, then grabs "em again."
"Huh!" said the girl contemptuously. "That"s nothing! I"m not afraid of mice. Poor little things. Besides, I had gauntlets on."
"No," said Ellis slowly, with a mocking chuckle, "it"d take more than a mouse to scare _you_-we know that! Come! I"ll trade you aliases. _I_ haven"t caught a man for over two months now."
His mischievous meaning was only too obvious, and the girl colored to her laughing eyes, grabbing, next instant, a ball of wool from Mrs.
Trainor"s lap, which she shied at him.
Benton, dodging this missile, gazed piercingly at her for several seconds without moving a muscle of his face; then, suddenly swinging around on the music-stool, he brought down his hands with a crash of chords and, in a great rollicking voice and a broad Somersetshire dialect, commenced to sing a bucolic love ditty. Something that went:
"Vor if yeou conzents vor tu marry I now, Whoy-Vather "e"ll gie uns "is old vat zow!
With a rum dum-dum dum-dubble dum day!"
"Boo-o-oo! La, la, la!" shrilled poor Mary, covering her ears. "Oh, _please_, Mrs. Trainor, _do_ make him stop!"
"What"s the use, my dear?" cried that merry dame, in great amus.e.m.e.nt.
"He wouldn"t listen to me. He"s too impudent for anything."
While Trainor slapped his thigh and guffawed uproariously.
"Oh, oh!" screamed the girl, stamping and pirouetting about the room, "he"s starting _another_ verse! Oh, quit, quit, quit! or _I"ll_ start in opposition! I"ll make such a noise they won"t be able to hear you!"
And at the top of her voice she started to declaim l.u.s.tily:
"Arrah, go on! You"re only tazin!
Arrah, go on! You"re somethin" awful!
Arrah, go on! You"re mighty plazin!
Oh, arrah go way! go wid yer! go way! go on!"
"That settles it," shouted Ellis, jumping up. "I"ll sure give in to _that_. Peccavi! I"ll chuck up the sponge. But you be good after this now, or I"ll sing you some _more_ "Zummerzet." Don"t bother about getting your hair done up again, Miss O"Malley. It looks "Jake" like that. Just tie a bit of red ribbon round. Come on; go and get your riding things on. Johnny"s feeling pretty good-hasn"t been out for three days now."
"Oh, my, but that"s great!" gasped Mary ecstatically, half an hour later, as they pulled their excited, eager horses up to a walk, after a perilous neck-and-neck gallop, supremely careless of whatever badger-holes lay in their course on the long, flat stretch. "Aha, Johnny, old boy! you sure do like to be let out for a run, don"t you?"
she continued caressingly, as she patted the arched, swelling neck of the great springy beast under her who, with a network of quivering, hard, grain-fed muscles rippling beneath his smooth, black-satiny coat, sidled and paced with daintily uplifted forefeet. The powerful animal carried his substantially-built rider as if she were only a child, flattening his ears and biting with equine playfulness meanwhile at Billy, the big, upstanding, well-coupled-up bay that Ellis was riding.
"Well, whither away?" he inquired. "Where shall we go? Gosh, but it"s hot!"
"Let"s go up on the top of that big hill over to the west there-where that flat stone is," she said, indicating a high, conical hill, something like a South African _kopje_ that loomed up in the distance.
"I always call it "Lone b.u.t.te" because it"s all by itself. It"s cooler up there, and we can lazy around and look at the mountains."
Half an hour"s ride over steadily rising ground brought them to their destination and, arriving at the foot of the aforesaid b.u.t.te, they dismounted and, leaving their horses to graze, with dropped lines, slowly made the ascent. There, on the extreme top, a relic of some vast upheaval in the past, was a huge, long, low-lying flat stone, upon which Mary seated herself and, removing her Stetson hat, let the cool breeze play on her forehead and blow the shining tendrils of hair about her face. Ellis flung himself out at full length on the short turf at her feet and together they silently gazed in huge contentment at the panorama that lay unfolded before them.
Below, looking east, shimmering with the little heat waves, the long rolling vistas of greenish-brown prairie lay stretched out to the horizon, through which, like a gleaming silver thread, wound the Bow River; while to the west, above the pine-dotted foothills of a great Indian Reserve, rose the upflung, snow-capped violet peaks of the mighty "Rockies," the hot afternoon"s sun enveloping all in its sleepy golden haze.
The Sergeant, with his chin resting in his hands, looked long and lovingly at the peaceful beauty of the scene.
"Begad, just look at _that_ now!" he murmured. "No wonder a fellow loves an open-air life in the West ... there"s a picture for some poor beggar that"s p"r"aps cooped up in an office all day, what? ... just the kind of background Charley Russell always manages to get into his pictures, isn"t it? To my mind he and Remington are the only artists who can depict the prairie and its life properly-_they_ don"t slur over detail like some of "em. No matter whether it"s landscape, Indians, cow-punchers, horses, cattle, hunting scenes, gun-sc.r.a.ps, or what not, they give you the real thing-correct in every item. _That"s_ what hits us who live _in_ such backgrounds. They not only make you _see_ it on, canvas, they positively make you _feel_ it.... Well, Charley Russell ought to know, if any man!... he punched cattle and wrangled horses for a living-long before he ever thought of painting!"
A gopher popped up its head out of a hole a few feet away from Benton and, after blinking inquisitively awhile with its beady brown eyes at the two human beings who remained so still, it apparently decided that there was nothing to fear from them and emerged fully from its retreat.
With tucked-in paws, it sat bolt upright and regarded them with grave interest.
Ellis eyed the rodent indolently for a s.p.a.ce; then, reaching cautiously to his hip, he half drew a deadly-looking "Luger" pistol from its holster-to which previously mentioned confiscated weapon sinister memories were attached. The girl saw his movement and involuntarily thrust out a protesting hand.
"No, no!" she said, in a loud eager whisper. "Don"t shoot the poor little chap-it isn"t as if he was in the garden. "Live, and let live,"
you know. Oh, you _nasty_ thing!"
As the Sergeant, laughing quietly, in lazy acquiescence, jerked his gun home again and, instead, spat with unerring aim on the gopher"s fat back, which insult caused it to dive instantly into its hole again. For a long time they remained silent, drinking in the fresh air; then the girl who, with elbows-in-lap, was leaning forward absently swinging her quirt, flicked her abstracted companion playfully.