Unlike most of those who ride much, her escort was a fast walker. Louise had trouble in keeping up with him, though she had always considered herself a good pedestrian. But Jim Munson was laboring under strange embarrassment. He was red-facedly conscious of the attention he was attracting striding up the inclined street from the station in the van of the prettiest and most thoroughbred girl who had struck Velpen this long time.
Not that he objected to attention under normal conditions. Not he! He courted it. His chief aim in life seemed to be to throw the limelight of publicity, first, on the Three Bars ranch, as the one and only in the category of ranches, and to be connected with it in some way, however slight, the unquestioned aim and object of existence of every man, woman, and child in the cattle country; secondly, on Paul Langford, the very boss of bosses, whose master mind was the prop and stay of the Northwest, if not of all Christendom; and lastly upon himself, the modest, but loyal servitor in this Paradise on earth. But girls were far from normal conditions. There were no women at the Three Bars. There never had been any woman at the Three Bars within the memory of man. To be sure, Williston’s little girl had sometimes ridden over on an errand, but she didn’t count. This—this was the real thing, and he didn’t know just how to deal with it. He needed time to enlarge his sight to this broadened horizon.
He glanced with nonchalance over his shoulder. After all, she was only a girl, and not such a big one either. She wore longer skirts than Williston’s girl, but he didn’t believe she was a day older. He squared about immediately, and what he had meant to say he never said, on account of an unaccountable thickening of his tongue.
Presently, he bolted into a building, which proved to be the Bon Ami, a restaurant under the direct supervision of the fat, voluble, and tragic Mrs. Higgins, where the men from the other side of the river had right of way and unlimited credit.
“What’ll you have?” he asked, hospitably, the familiar air of the Bon Ami bringing him back to his accustomed self-confident swagger.
“Might I have some tea and toast, please?” said Louise, sinking into a chair at the nearest table, with two startling yet amusing thoughts rampant in her brain. One was, that she wished Aunt Helen could have seen her swinging along in the wake of this typical “bold and licentious” man, and calmly and comfortably sitting down to a cosy little supper for two at a public eating house; the other startling thought was to the effect that the invitation was redolent with suggestiveness, and she wondered if she was not expected to say, “A whiskey for me, please.”
“Guess you kin,” answered Jim, wonder in his voice at the exceeding barrenness of the order. “Mrs. Higgins, hello there, Mrs. Higgins! I say, there, bring on some tea and toast for the lady!”
“Where is the Three Bars?” asked Louise, her thoughts straying to the terrors of a fifteen-mile drive through a strange and uncanny country with a stranger and yet more uncanny man. She had accepted him without question. He was part and parcel with the strangeness of her new position. But the suddenness of the transition from idle conjecture to startling reality had raised her proud head and she looked this new development squarely in the face without outward hint of inward perturbation.
“Say, where was you raised?” asked Jim, with tolerant scorn, between huge mouthfuls of boiled pork and cabbage, interspersed with baked potatoes, hot rolls, and soggy dumplings, shovelled in with knife, fork, or spoon. He occasionally anticipated dessert by making a sudden sortie into the quarter of an immense custard pie, hastening the end by means of noisy draughts of steaming coffee. Truly, the Three Bars connection had the fat of the land at the Bon Ami.
“Why, it’s the Three Bars that’s bringin’ you here. Didn’t you know that? There’s nary a man in the hull country with backbone enough to keep him off all-fours ’ceptin’ Paul Langford. Um. You just try once to walk over the Boss, will you? Lord! What a grease spot you’d make!”
“Mr. Gordon isn’t being walked over, is he?” asked Louise, finished with her tea and toast and impatient to be off.
“Oh, Gordon? Pretty decent sort o’ chap. Right idees. Don’t know much about handlin’ hoss thieves and sich. Ain’t smooth enough. Acted kind o’ like a chicken with its head cut off till the Boss got into the roundup.”
“Oh!” said Louise, whose conception of the young counsel for the State did not tally with this delineation.
“Yep, Miss, this here’s the Boss’s doin’s. Yep. Lord! What’ll that gang look like when we are through with ’em? Spendin’ the rest o’ their days down there in Sioux Falls, meditatin’ on the advisability o’ walkin’ clear o’ the toes o’ the Three Bars in the future and cussin’ their stupendified stupidity in foolin’ even once with the Three Bars. Yep, sir—yep, ma’am, I mean,—Jesse Black and his gang have acted just like pesky, little plum’-fool moskeeters, and we’re goin’ to slap ’em. The cheek of ’em, lightin’ on the Three Bars! Lord!”
“Mr. Williston informed, did he not?”
“Williston? Oh, yes, he informed, but he’d never ’a’ done it if it hadn’t ’a’ been for the Boss. The ol’ jellyfish wouldn’t ’a’ had the nerve to inform without backin’, as sure as a stone wall. The Boss is a doin’ this, I tell you, Miss. But Williston’s a goin’ on the stand to-morrer all right, and so am I.”
The two cowboys at the corner table had long since finished their supper. They now lighted bad-smelling cigars and left the room. To Louise’s great relief, Munson rose, too. He was back very soon with a neat little runabout and a high-spirited team of bays.
“Boss’s private,” explained Jim with pride. “Nothin’ too good for a lady, so the Boss sent this and me to take keer o’ it. And o’ you, too, Miss,” he added, as an afterthought.
He held the lines in his brown, muscular hands, lovingly, while he stowed away Louise’s belongings and himself snugly in the seat, and then the blood burned hot and stinging through his bronzed, tough skin, for suddenly in his big, honest, untrained sensibilities was born the consciousness that the Boss would have stowed away the lady first. It was an embarrassing moment. Louise saved the day by climbing in unconcernedly after him and tucking the linen robe over her skirt.
“It will be a dusty drive, won’t it?” she asked, simply.
“Miss, you’re a—dandy,” said Jim as simply.
As they drove upon the pontoon bridge, Louise looked back at the little town on the bluffs, and felt a momentary choking in her throat. It was a strange place, yet it had tendrils reaching homeward. The trail beyond was obscurely marked and not easy to discern. She turned to her companion and asked quickly: “Why didn’t Mary come?”
“Great guns! Did I forgit to tell you? Williston’s got the stomach-ache to beat the band and Mary’s got to physic him up ’gin to-morrer. We’ve got to git him on that stand if it takes the hull Three Bars to hol’ him up and the gal a pourin’ physic down him between times. Yep, Ma’am. He was pizened. You see, everybody that ate any meat last night was took sick with gripin’ cramps, yep; but Williston he was worse’n all, he bein’ a hearty eater. He was a stayin’ in town over night on this preliminary business, and Dick Gordon he was took, too, but not so bad, bein’ what you might call a light eater. The Boss and me we drove home after all, though we’d expected to stay for supper. The pesky coyotes got fooled that time. Yep, Ma’am, no doubt about it in the world. Friends o’ Jesse’s that we ain’t able to lay hands on yit pizened that there meat. Yep, no doubt about it. Dick was in an awful sweat about you. Was bound he was a comin’ after you hisself, sick as he was, when we found Mary was off the count. So then the Boss was a comin’ and they fit and squabbled for an hour who could be best spared, when I, comin’ in, settled it in a jiffy by offerin’ my services, which was gladly accepted. When there’s pizenin’ goin’ on, why, the Boss’s place is hum. And nothin’ would do but the Boss’s own particular outfit. He never does things by halves, the Boss don’t. So I hikes home after it and then hikes here.”
“I am very grateful to him, I am sure,” murmured Louise, smiling.
And Jim, daring to look upon her smiling face, clear eyes, and soft hair under the jaunty French sailor hat, found himself wondering why there was no woman at the Three Bars. With the swift, half-intuitive thought, the serpent entered Eden.