"I don"t know; I hadn"t heard anything about it. I haven"t been there for a month and more," said Ward easily. "Nearer two months, come to think of it. I was there after a mower and rake and some wire."
"Oh!" Billy Louise glanced at him sidelong and added several more wolves to the number she had mentally put down to Ward"s credit.
Ward twisted in the saddle so that he faced her, and his eyes were dancing with mischief. "Honest, William, I"m not wading into debt.
Every cent I"ve put into that place this summer I made hunting wolves.
That"s a fact, Wilhemina."
"I wish you"d tell me how, so I can do it, too," Billy Louise sighed, convinced by his tone and flat statement, yet feeling certain there was some "catch" to it, after all. It was exactly like a riddle that sounds perfectly plain and simple to the ears, and to the reason utterly impossible.
"Well, I will--when you"re through playing pals," he a.s.sured her cruelly. Ward did not know women very well, but he believed curiosity to be one of the strongest traits in the s.e.x. "That"s a bargain, William Louisa, and I"ll shake hands on it if you like. When you"ve had enough of this just-friend business, I"ll show you how I dig dollars outa wolf-dens." He grinned at the puzzled face of her. It was a riddle, and he had practically put the answer before her, and still she could not see it. There was a little streak of devilment in Ward, and happiness was uncovering the streak.
"I never said I was crazy to know," Billy Louise squelched him promptly. "Not that crazy, anyway. I"ll live quite as long without knowing, I reckon."
She almost won her point--because Ward did not know women very well.
He hesitated, gave her a quick, questioning glance, and actually opened his lips to tell her all about it. He got as far as, "Oh, well, I suppose I"ll have to--" when Billy Louise saw a rattlesnake in the trail ahead and spurred up to kill it with her rope. She really was crazy to know the answer to the riddle, but a rattlesnake will interrupt anything from a proposal of marriage to a murder.
Ward"s fingers had gone into the pocket in his shirt where the nugget he had found that morning was sagging the cloth a little. He had been on the point of giving it to Billy Louise, but he let it stay where it was and instead took down his own rope to get after the snake, that had crawled under a bush and there showed a disposition to fight. And since Blue was no fonder of rattlesnakes than he was of mud, Billy Louise could not bring him close enough for a direct blow.
"Get back, and I"ll show you why I named this cayuse Rattler," Ward shouted. "I"ll bet I"ve killed five hundred snakes with him--"
"Almost as many as you have wolves!" Billy Louise snapped back at him and so lost her point just when she had practically gained it. Ward certainly would not tell her, after that stab.
Rattler perked his ears forward toward the strident buzzing which once heard is never forgotten, and which is never heard without a tensing of nerves. He sighted the snake, coiled and ready for war in the small shade of a rabbit-bush. He circled the spot warily, his head turned sidewise, and his eyes fixed upon the flattened, ugly head with its thread of a darting tongue.
Ward pulled his gun, "threw down" on the snake, and cut off its head with a bullet.
"I could have done that myself," Billy Louise a.s.serted jealously.
"Well, I forgot. Next time I"ll let you do the shooting. I was going to show you how Rattler helps. He"ll circle around just right so I can make one swing of the rope do. But Mr. Snake stuck too close to that rabbit brush; and I was afraid if I drove him out of there with my rope, he"d get under those rocks. I"m sorry, Wilhemina. I didn"t think."
"Oh, I can get all the snake-shooting I want, any time." Billy Louise laughed good-humoredly. "I wish you"d give Blue a few lessons--the old sinner!"
"Not on your life, I won"t." Ward leaned from the saddle, picked up the snake by the tail, pinched off the rattles, and dropped the repulsive thing to the ground with a slight shiver of relief. He gave the rattles to Billy Louise. "I"m glad Blue does feel a wholesome respect for rattlers; he"ll take better care of himself--and his mistress. With me it doesn"t matter."
"Oh--doesn"t it?" asked Billy Louise, and there was that in her tone that made Ward"s heart give a flop. "There"s some of Marthy"s cattle right ahead," she added hurriedly, seizing the first trifle with which to neutralize the effect of that tone.
"MK monogram," said Ward absently, reading the brand mechanically, as is the habit of your true range man. "Pretty fresh, too. Must have just bought them."
"He got them a month or so ago," said Billy Louise. "Marthy says--"
"A month?" Ward turned and gave the cow nearest him a keener look.
"Pretty good condition," he observed, quite idly. "Say, William, when these hills get filled up with Y6es and big Ds, all these other scrub critters will have to hunt new range, won"t they?"
"It will be a long while before the big Ds crowd out so much as a crippled calf," Billy Louise answered pessimistically. "I lost two nice heifers, a week or so ago. They broke through the upper fence into the alfalfa and started to fill up, of course. They were dead when I found them."
"Next time I cash in my wolf--" Ward started to promise, but she cut him short.
"Do you mind if we stop at the Cove, Ward? Mommie wanted me to stop and get some currants. Marthy says they"re ripe, and she has more than she knows what to do with."
"I don"t mind--if you"re dead sure it"s the currants."
"You certainly are in a pestering mood to-day," Billy Louise protested, laughing. "You can"t jump any game on that trail, smarty. Charlie Fox is a perfectly lovely young man, but he"s got a girl in Wyoming. The stage-driver says there"s never been a trip in that he didn"t take a letter from the Cove box to Miss Gertrude M. Shannon, Elk Valley, Wyoming. So you needn"t try--"
"Nice, mouthy stage-driver," Ward commented. "Foxy ought to land on him a few times and see if he"d take the hint."
"Well, I knew it before he told me. Marthy said last winter that Charlie"s engaged. He"s trying to get prosperous enough to marry her and bring her out to the Cove; it will be his when Marthy dies, anyway.
I must say Charlie"s a hustler, all right. He keeps a man all the time now, since he bought more cattle. Peter Howling Dog"s working for him.
Charlie"s tried to range-herd his cattle so he and Peter can gather them alone; and he offered to look after mine, too, so I won"t have so much riding to do this hot weather. He"s awfully nice, Ward, really.
I don"t care if he is a rah-rah boy. And he isn"t a bit in love with me."
"Is it possible," grinned Ward, "that any human man can come out West and not fall in love with the Prairie Flower--"
"Ward Warren, do you want me to--"
"But it"s breaking all the rules of romance, Bill-the-Conk!" Ward persisted. "No story-sharp would ever stand for a thing like that.
Don"t you know that the nice young man from college always takes notice in the second chapter, says "By Jove! What a little beauty!" in the third, and from there on till the wind-up spends most of his time running around in circles because the beautiful flower of the rancho gives him the bad eye?" He twisted sidewise in the saddle, took a half-hitch with the reins around the saddle-horn, and proceeded to manufacture a cigarette while he went on with the burlesque.
"It opened out according to Hoyle, a year ago, William. Nice young man comes west. Finds Flower of the Rancho first rattle of the box, with brave young buckaroo riding herd on her to beat four of a kind. Looks like there"s no chance for our young hero. Brave buckaroo has to hie him forth to toil, however--" Ward paused long enough to light up, and afterwards blow out the match carefully before dropping it in the trail, "--at the humble sum of forty dollars per month. That leaves our young hero on the job temporarily. Stick in a few chapters of heart-burnings on the part of the brave buckaroo--"
"Oh, yes, no doubt!" from Billy Louise, who was trying not to giggle.
"Oh, he had "em, far as that goes. Brave buckaroo had heart-burnings enough for a Laura Jean Libbey romance. All according to Hoyle. Young hero-- Say, Bill, what"s the matter with that gazabo, anyway? Hasn"t he got good eyesight, or what? Can"t the chump see he"s overlooking a bet when--"
"Oh, you make me sick!" Billy Louise slashed at a ripening branch of service berries with her quirt and scared Blue so that he lunged against the romancer. "You men seem to think the girl has nothing to say about it! You think we just sit and smile and wait for somebody to snap his fingers, and we jump at him! You--"
"Didn"t I say there would be several chapters where the haughty beauty keeps our young hero running around in circles, and the brave buckaroo can"t figure out whether he ought to buy a ring or more sh.e.l.ls for his six-gun?"
"With the inference that she flops into his arms in the last chapter and hides her maidenly blushes against the pocket where he keeps his sack of Bull Durham and papers--"
"Oh, you Bill-the-Conk! It would be the brave buckaroo in the last chapter then, would it?" Ward leaned close, swift tenderness putting the teasing twinkle to flight from his eyes. "Our young hero smokes a briar, Wilhemina-mine!"
"We-el--don"t skip!" cried Billy Louise, backing away from him with more blushes than any girl could hope to hide behind a coat of tan.
"There"s lots of chapters before the last. And you"ve got to read them straight through and--no fair skipping!"
"Wilhemina-mine!" Ward repeated the newly invented appellation, which seemed to approach satisfactorily close to the line of forbidden endearments.
"Oh, for pity"s sake! I never knew you to act so." Billy Louise scowled unconvincingly at him from a safe distance.
"I never was kissed before," blurted Ward foolhardily, kicking Rattler closer.
"Well, if that"s what ails you, I"ll see it doesn"t happen again,"
retorted Billy Louise squelchingly, and Ward"s self-a.s.surance was not great enough to lift him over the barrier of that rebuff.
They came upon Charlie Fox sitting on his horse beside the crude mail-box, reading avidly a letter of many crisp, close-written pages.
Billy Louise flashed Ward an I-told-you-so glance.
"Why, how do you do?" Charlie came out of cloudland with a start and turned to them cordially, while he hastily folded the letter. "Going down into the Cove? That"s good. I was just up after the mail. How are things up your way, Warren?"
"Fine as silk." Ward"s eyes swung briefly toward what he considered the chief bit of fineness.