"But Mac didn"t have a most particular engagement with the boys. There"s a difference."
"Why, I ain"t got--" Reddy paused and looked around helplessly.
"Gents, I move y"u that it be the horse sense of the Lazy D that our friend Mr. Reddy Reeves be given gratis one chapping immediately if not sooner. The reason for which same being that he played a lowdown trick on the outfit whose bread he was eating."
"Oh, quit your foolin", boys," besought the victim anxiously.
"And that Denver, being some able-bodied and having a good reach, be requested to deliver same to the gent needing it," concluded Missou.
Reddy backed in alarm to the wall. "Y"u boys don"t want to get gay with me. Y"u can"t monkey with--"
Motion carried unanimously.
Just as Reddy whipped out his revolver Denver"s long leg shot out and his foot caught the wrist behind the weapon. When Reddy next took cognizance of his surroundings he was serving as a mattress for the anatomy of three stalwart riders. He was gently deposited face down on his bunk with a one-hundred-eighty-pound live peg at the end of each arm and leg.
"All ready, Denver," announced Frisco from the end of the left foot.
Denver selected a pair of plain leather chaps with care and proceeded to business. What he had to do he did with energy. It is safe to say that at least one of those present can still vividly remember this and testify to his thoroughness.
Mac drifted in after the disciplining. As foreman it was fitting that he should be discreetly ignorant of what had occurred, but he could not help saying:
"That y"u I heard singing, Reddy? Seems to me y"u had ought to take that voice into grand opera. The way y"u straddle them high notes is a caution for fair. What was it y"u was singing? Sounded like "Would I were far from here, love.""
"Y"u go to h.e.l.l," choked Reddy, rushing past him from the bunkhouse.
McWilliams looked round innocently. "I judge some of y"u boys must a-been teasing Reddy from his manner. Seemed like he didn"t want to sit down and talk."
"I shouldn"t wonder but he"ll hold his conversations standing for a day or two," returned Missou gravely.
At the end of the laugh that greeted this Mac replied:
"Well, y"u boys want to be gentle with him." "He"s so plumb tender now that I reckon he"ll get along without any more treatment in that line from us," drawled Frisco.
Mac departed laughing. He had an engagement that recurred daily in the dusk of the evening, and he was always careful to be on time. The other party to the engagement met him at the kitchen door and fell with him into the trail that led to Lee Ming"s laundry.
"What made you late?" she asked.
"I"m not late, honey. I seem late because you"re so anxious," he explained.
"I"m not," protested Nora indignantly. "If you think you"re the only man on the place, Jim McWilliams."
"Sho! Hold your hawsses a minute, Nora, darling. A spinster like y"u--"
"You think you"re awful funny--writing in my autograph alb.u.m that a spinster"s best friend is her powder box. I like Mr. Halliday"s ways better. He"s a perfect gentleman."
"I ain"t got a word to say against Denver, even if he did write in your book,
""Sugar is sweet, The sky is blue, Gra.s.s is green And so are you."
I reckon, being a perfect gentleman, he meant--"
"You know very well you wrote that in yourself and pretended it was Mr.
Halliday, signing his name and everything. It wasn"t a bit nice of you."
"Now do I look like a forger?" he wanted to know with innocence on his cherubic face.
"Anyway you know it was mean. Mr. Halliday wouldn"t do such a thing. You take your arm down and keep it where it belongs, Mr. McWilliams."
"That ain"t my name, Nora, darling, and I"d like to know where my arm belongs if it isn"t round the prettiest girl in Wyoming. What"s the use of being engaged if--"
"I"m not sure I"m going to stay engaged to you," announced the young woman coolly, walking at the opposite edge of the path from him.
"Now that ain"t any way to talk."
"You needn"t lecture me. I"m not your wife and I don"t think I"m going to be," cut in Nora, whose temper was ruffled on account of having had to wait for him as well as for other reasons.
"Y"u surely wouldn"t make me sue y"u for breach of promise, would y"u?"
he demanded, with a burlesque of anxiety that was the final straw.
Nora turned on her heel and headed for the house.
"Now don"t y"u get mad at me, honey. I was only joking," he explained as he pursued her.
"You think you can laugh at me all you please. I"ll show you that you can"t," she informed him icily.
"Sho! I wasn"t laughing at y"u. What tickled me--"
"I"m not interested in your amus.e.m.e.nt, Mr. McWilliams."
"What"s the use of flying out about a little thing like that? Honest, I don"t even know what you"re mad at me for," the perplexed foreman averred.
"I"m not mad at you, as you call it. I"m simply disgusted."
And with a final "Good night" flung haughtily over her shoulder Miss Nora Darling disappeared into the house.
Mac took off his hat and gazed at the door that had been closed in his face. He scratched his puzzled poll in vain.
"I ce"tainly got mine good and straight just like Reddy got his. But what in time was it all about? And me thinkin" I was a graduate in the study of the ladies. I reckon I never did get jarred up so. It"s plumb discouraging."
If he could have caught a glimpse of Nora at that moment, lying on her bed and crying as if her heart would break, Mac might have found the situation less hopeless.
CHAPTER 21. THE SIGNAL LIGHTS
In a little hill-rift about a mile back of the Lazy D Ranch was a deserted miner"s cabin.
The hut sat on the edge of a bluff that commanded a view of the buildings below, while at the same time the pines that surrounded it screened the shack from any casual observation. A thin curl of smoke was rising from the mud chimney, and inside the cabin two men lounged before the open fire.