"Then if it ain't too much trouble for you, we'll let it go."

"No trouble at all, Will--it will be a regular picnic."

"Boys, you'll eat with me this day," said Red.

They spread the board table beneath an old apple tree, and cleaned up for the repast in the kitchen storm-shed with an apologetic, "Sorry to trouble you, Miss Saunders," or such a matter as each went in.

Just as Miss Mattie was withdrawing the meat from the oven, there came a knock at the door.

"Goodness, gracious!" she exclaimed. "Who can that be now? Will, will you see who that is? I can't go."

"Sure!" said Red, and went to the door. There stood two women of that indefinite period between forty and sixty, very decently dressed and with some agitation visible in the way they fussily adjusted various parts of their attire.

They started at the sudden spectacle of the huge man who said pleasantly, "Howderdo, ladies!"

"Why, how do you do?" replied the taller instantly, and in a voice she had never heard before. "I hope you're well, sir?" A remark which filled her with surprise.

"Thanks--I'm able to a.s.sume the perpendicular, as you can see,"

responded Red with a handsome smile of welcome. "How do you find yourself?"

"I'm pretty well," said the fl.u.s.tered lady. "How do you do?"

"Durned if we ain't right back where we started from," mourned Red to himself. "If it's one of the customs of this country saying 'howderdo' an hour at a stretch, I pa.s.s it up." Aloud, he said, "Coming along fine--how's your father?" "Cuss me if I don't shift the cut a little, anyhow," he added mentally.

"Why, he's very well indeed!" exclaimed the lady with fervor.

"How--" She got no further on the query, for the other woman interrupted in a tone of scandal. "Mary Ann Demilt! How can you talk like that! Your father's been dead this five year last August!"

The horror of the moment was broken by the appearance of Miss Mattie, crying hospitably on seeing the visitors, "Why, Mary and Pauline! How do you do?"

The shorter one--Pauline--looked up and said sharply, "We're well enough, Mattie." She was weary of the form.

"Come right in," said Miss Mattie. "You're just in time for dinner."

There was a great protest at this. They "hadn't a moment to spare," they were "just going down to the corner, and had stopped to say," etc., etc.

"You've got to help me," said Miss Mattie. "Will here has invited the boys who are working for him to stay to dinner, and it won't be any more than Christian for you to help me out."

"Ladies!" said Red. "If you don't want to starve a man who's deserving of a better fate, take off your fixings and come out to dinner. No," he continued to their protests, which he observed were growing weaker. "It's no trouble at all: there's plenty for everybody--come one, come all, this house shall fly, clean off its base as soon as I--Now for Heaven's sake, ladies, it's all settled--come on."

Whereat they laughed nervously, and took off their hats.

It was a jolly dinner party. The young fellows Red had picked up in the blacksmith's shop were not the ordinary quality of loungers.

They were boys of good country parentage, with a common school education, who, unfortunately, could find nothing to do but the occasional odd job. Of course it would not take long to transform them into common n'er-do-wells, but now they were merely thoughtless boys.

The whole affair had an _al fresco_ flavor which stoppered convention. The two women visitors pitched in and had as good a time as anybody.

In the middle of the festivities a young man walked past the front fence; a stranger evidently, for-his clothes wore the cut of a city, and a cosmopolitan, up-to-date city at that. He stopped and looked at the house, hesitated a moment and then walked in, back to where the folk were eating.

"Excuse me," said he, as they looked up at him, "but isn't this Mr.

Demilt's house?"

A momentary silence followed, as it was not clear whose turn it was to answer. Miss Mattie glanced around and finding Red's eye on her, replied, "No sir--Mr. Demilt's house is about a mile further up the road."

"Dear me!" said the young man ruefully. He was a spic-and-span, intelligent looking man, with less of the dandy about him than the air of a man who had never worn anything but clothes of the proper trim, and become quite used to it. Nevertheless the sweat stood out in drops on his forehead, for Fairfield's front "street"

savoured of a less moral region than it really was, on a broiling summer day.

The young man sighed frankly and wiped his head. "Well, that's too bad," he said. "I'm a stranger here--would you kindly tell me where I could get some dinner?"

"What's the matter with that?" inquired Red, pointing to the roast, which still preserved an air of fallen greatness. He had liked the look of the other instantly.

The stranger looked first at Red and then at the roast. "The only thing I can see the matter with that," he answered, "is that it is a slice too thick."

"Keno!" cried Red, "you get it. Mattie, another plate and weapons to fit. Sit down, sir, and rest your fevered feet. It you don't like walking any better than I do, you've probably strewn fragments of one of the commandments all the way from where the stage dropped you to this apple tree."

"It seems to me that I did make some remarks that I never learned at my mother's knee," returned the other laughing. "And I'm exceedingly obliged for the invitation, as there doesn't seem to be a hotel here, and I am but a degree south of starvation."

"Red or black?" asked the host, with a quick glance at his guest.

The other caught the allusion. "I haven't followed the deal," he replied, "but I'll chance it on the red."

Somehow he felt instantly at home and at ease; it was a quality that Red Saunders dispersed wherever he went.

"There you are, sir," said Red, forwarding a plate full of juicy meat. "The ladies will supply the decorations."

"Do you like rice as a vegetable, sir?" inquired Miss Mattie.

"No--he doesn't," interrupted Red. "He likes it as an animal--never saw anyone who looked less like a vegetable than our friend," The young man's laugh rang out above the others.

Poor Miss Mattie was confused. "It's too bad of you, Will, to put such a meaning on my words," she said.

"The strange part of it is," spoke the young man, seeing an opportunity for a joke, and to deal courteously with his entertainers at the same time. "The peculiar fact is, that my name is Lettis."

"Lettuce?" cried Red. "Mattie, I apologise--he is a vegetable."

At which they all laughed again.

"And now," said Red, "I'm Red Saunders, late of the Chantay Seeche Ranch, Territory of Dakota--State of North Dakota, I mean, can't get used to the State business; there's a Bill and a d.i.c.k on this side of me and two Johns and a Sammy on the other. Foot of the table is Miss Mattie Saunders, next to her--just as they run--Miss Pauline Doolittle and Miss Mary Ann Demilt, who may be kin to the gentleman you're seeking."

"Mr. Thomas F. Demilt?" asked the stranger.

"He's my sister," responded Miss Mary Ann. Whereat the youths buried their faces in the plates, as Mr. Thomas F., in spite of many excellent qualities, bore a pathetic resemblance to the t.i.tle.

"I mean," continued the lady hurriedly, "that I'm his brother."

"By Jimmy, ma'am!" exclaimed Red. "But yours is a strange family!"

"What Miss Demilt wishes to say," cut in Miss Doolittle with some asperity, "is that Mr. Thomas Faulkenstone Demilt is her brother."

She did not add, as extreme candour would have urged, "And I have some hope--remote, alas! but there--of becoming sister to Miss Demilt myself."