Miss Bridger looked at him sidelong and laughed to herself. "That's to pay you for forgetting that you ever met Mama Joy," she a.s.serted. "I shouldn't be surprised if next week you'll have forgotten that you ever met _me_. And if you do, after that chicken stew--"

"You're a josher," said Billy helplessly, not being prepared to say just all he thought about the possibility of his forgetting her. He wished that he understood women better, so that he might the better cope with the vagaries of this one; and so great was his ignorance that he never dreamed that every man since Adam had wished the same thing quite as futilely.

"I'm not going to josh now," she promised, with a quick change of manner. "You haven't--I _know_ you haven't, but I'll give you a chance to dissemble--you haven't a partner for the dance, have you?"

"No. Have you?" Billy did have the courage to say that, though he dared not say more.

"Well, I--I could be persuaded," she hinted shamelessly.

"Persuade nothing! Yuh belong to me, and if anybody tries to throw his loop over your head, why--" Billy looked dangerous; he meant the Pilgrim.

"Thank you." She seemed relieved, and it was plain she did not read into his words any meaning beyond the dance, though Billy was secretly hoping that she would. "Do you know, I think you're perfectly lovely.

You're so--so _comfortable_. When I've known you a little longer I expect I'll be calling you Charming Billy, or else Billy Boy. If you'll stick close to me all through this dance and come every time I lift my eyebrows this way"--she came near getting kissed, right then, but she never knew it--"and say it's _your_ dance and that I promised it to you before, I'll be--_awfully_ grateful and obliged."

"I wisht," said Billy pensively, "I had the nerve to take all this for sudden admiration; but I savvy, all right. Some poor devil's going to get it handed to him to-night."

For the first time Miss Bridger blushed consciously. "I--well, you'll be good and obliging and do just what I want, won't you?"

"Sure!" said Billy, not trusting himself to say more. Indeed, he had to set his teeth hard on that word to keep more from tumbling out.

Miss Bridger seemed all at once anxious over something.

"You waltz and two-step and polka and schottische, don't you?" Her eyes, as she looked up at him, reminded Billy achingly of that time in the line-camp when she asked him for a horse to ride home. They had the same wistful, pleading look. Billy gritted his teeth.

"Sure," he answered again.

Miss Bridger sighed contentedly. "I know it's horribly mean and selfish of me, but you're so good--and I'll make it up to you some time. Really I will! At some other dance you needn't dance with me once, or look at me, even--That will even things up, won't it?"

"Sure," said Billy for the third time.

They paced slowly, coming into view of the picnic crowd, hearing the incoherent murmur of many voices. Miss Bridger looked at him uncertainly, laughed a little and spoke impulsively. "You needn't do it, Mr. Boyle, unless you like. It's only a joke, anyway; I mean, my throwing myself at you like that. Just a foolish joke; I'm often foolish, you know. Of course, I know you wouldn't misunderstand or anything like that, but it _is_ mean of me to drag you into it by the hair of the head, almost, just to play a joke on some one--on Mama Joy. You're too good-natured. You're a direct temptation to people who haven't any conscience. Really and truly, you needn't do it at all."

"Yuh haven't heard me raising any howl, have yuh?" inquired Billy, eying her slantwise. "I'm playing big luck, if yuh ask me."

"Well--if you _really_ don't mind, and haven't any one else--"

"I haven't," Billy a.s.sured her unsmilingly. "And I really don't mind.

I think I--kinda like the prospect." He was trying to match her mood and he was not at all sure that he was a success. "There's one thing. If yuh get tired uh having me under your feet all the time, why--Dilly's a stranger and an awful fine fellow; I'd like to have you--well, be kinda nice to him. I want him to have a good time, you see, and you'll like him. You can't help it. And it will square up anything yuh may feel yuh might owe me--"

"I'll be just lovely to Dilly," Miss Bridger promised him with emphasis. "It will be a fair bargain, then, and I won't feel so--so small about asking you what I did. You can help me play a little joke, and I'll dance with Duly. So," she finished in a tone of satisfaction, "we'll be even. I feel a great deal better now, because I can pay you back."

Billy, on that night, was more keenly observant than usual and there was much that he saw. He saw at once that Miss Bridger lifted her eyebrows in the way she had demonstrated as _this way_, whenever the Pilgrim approached her. He saw that the Pilgrim was looking extremely bloodthirsty and went out frequently--Billy guessed shrewdly that his steps led to where the drink was not water--and the sight cheered him considerably. Yet it hurt him a little to observe that, when the Pilgrim was absent or showed no sign of meaning to intrude upon her, Miss Bridger did not lift her eyebrows consciously. Still, she was at all times pleasant and friendly and he tried to be content.

"Mr. Boyle, you've been awfully good," she rewarded him when it was over. "And I think Mr. Dill is fine! Do you know, he waltzes beautifully. I'm sure it was easy to keep _my_ side of the bargain."

Billy noticed the slight, inquiring emphasis upon the word _my_, and he smiled down rea.s.suringly into her face. "Uh course mine was pretty hard," he teased, "but I hope I made good, all right."

"You," she said, looking steadily up at him, "are just exactly what I said you were. You are comfortable."

Billy did a good deal of thinking while he saddled Barney in the gray of the morning, with Dill at a little distance, looking taller than ever in the half light. When he gave the saddle its final, little tentative shake and pulled the stirrup around so that he could stick in his toe, he gave also a snort of dissatisfaction.

"h.e.l.l!" he said to himself. "I don't know as I care about being too _blame_ comfortable. There's a limit to that kinda thing--with _her!_"

"What's that?" called Dill, who had heard his voice.

"Aw, nothing," lied Billy, swinging up. "I was just cussing my hoss."

CHAPTER XII.

_Dilly Hires a Cook._

It is rather distressful when one cannot recount all sorts of exciting things as nicely fitted together as if they had been carefully planned and rehea.r.s.ed beforehand. It would have been extremely gratifying and romantic if Charming Billy Boyle had dropped everything in the line of work and had ridden indefatigably the trail which led to Bridger's; it would have been exciting if he had sought out the Pilgrim and precipitated trouble and flying lead. But Billy, though he might have enjoyed it, did none of those things. He rode straight to the ranch with Dill--rather silent, to be sure, but bearing none of the marks of a lovelorn young man--drank three cups of strong coffee with four heaping teaspoonfuls of sugar to each cup, pulled off his boots, lay down upon the most convenient bed and slept until noon. When the smell of dinner a.s.sailed his nostrils he sat up yawning and a good deal tousled, drew on his boots and made him a cigarette. After that he ate his dinner with relish, saddled and rode away to where the round-up was camped, his manner utterly practical and lacking the faintest tinge of romance. As to his thoughts--he kept them jealously to himself.

He did not even glimpse Miss Bridger for three months or more. He was full of the affairs of the Double-Crank; riding in great haste to the ranch or to town, hurrying back to the round-up and working much as he used to work, except that now he gave commands instead of receiving them. For they were short-handed that summer and, as he explained to Dill, he couldn't afford to ride around and look as important as he felt.

"Yuh wait, Dilly, till we get things running the way I want 'em,"

he encouraged on one of his brief calls at the ranch. "I was kinda surprised to find things wasn't going as smooth as I used to think; when yuh haven't got the whole responsibility on your own shoulders, yuh don't realize what a lot of things need to be done. There's them corrals, for instance: I helped mend and fix and toggle 'em, but it never struck me how rotten they are till I looked 'em over this spring. There's about a million things to do before snow flies, or we won't be able to start out fresh in the spring with everything running smooth. And if I was you, Dilly, I'd go on a still hunt for another cook here at the ranch. This coffee's something fierce. I had my doubts about Sandy when we hired him. He always did look to me like he was built for herding sheep more than he was for cooking." This was in August.

"I have been thinking seriously of getting some one else in his place," Dill answered, in his quiet way. "There isn't very much to do here; if some one came who would take an interest and cook just what we wanted--I will own I have no taste for that peculiar mixture which Sandy calls 'Mulligan,' and I have frequently told him so. Yet he insists upon serving it twice a day. He says it uses up the sc.r.a.ps; but since it is never eaten, I cannot see wherein lies the economy."

"Well, I'd can him and hunt up a fresh one," Billy repeated emphatically, looking with disapproval into his cup.

"I will say that I have already taken steps toward getting one on whom I believe I can depend," said Dill, and turned the subject.

That was the only warning Billy had of what was to come. Indeed, there was nothing in the conversation to prepare him even in the slightest degree for what happened when he galloped up to the corral late one afternoon in October. It was the season of frosty mornings and of languorous, smoke-veiled afternoons, when summer has grown weary of resistance and winter is growing bolder in his advances, and the two have met in a pa.s.sion-warmed embrace. Billy had ridden far with his riders and the trailing wagons, in the zest of his young responsibility sweeping the range to its farthest boundary of river or mountain. They were not through yet, but they had swung back within riding distance of the home ranch and Billy had come in for nearly a month's acc.u.mulation of mail and to see how Dill was getting on.

He was tired and dusty and hungry enough to eat the fringes off his chaps. He came to the ground without any spring to his muscles and walked stiffly to the stable door, leading his horse by the bridle reins. He meant to turn him loose in the stable, which was likely to be empty, and shut the door upon him until he himself had eaten something. The door was open and he went in unthinkingly, seeing nothing in the gloom. It was his horse which snorted and settled back on the reins and otherwise professed his reluctance to enter the place.

Charming Billy, as was consistent with his hunger and his weariness and the general mood of him, "cussed" rather fluently and jerked the horse forward a step or two before he saw some one poised hesitatingly upon the manger in the nearest stall.

"I guess he's afraid of _me_," ventured a voice that he felt to his toes. "I was hunting eggs. They lay them always in the awkwardest places to get at." She scrambled down and came toward him, bareheaded, with the sleeves of her blue-and-white striped dress rolled to her elbows--Flora Bridger, if you please.

Billy stood still and stared, trying to make the reality of her presence seem reasonable; and he failed utterly. His most coherent thought at that moment was a shamed remembrance of the way he had sworn at his horse.

Miss Bridger stood aside from the wild-eyed animal and smiled upon his master. "In the language of the range, 'come alive,' Mr. Boyle," she told him. "Say how-de-do and be nice about it, or I'll see that your coffee is muddy and your bread burned and your steak absolutely impregnable; because I'm here to _stay_, mind you. Mama Joy and I have possession of your kitchen, and so you'd better--"

"I'm just trying to let it soak into my brains," said Billy. "You're just about the last person on earth I'd expect to see here, hunting eggs like you had a right--"

"I _have_ a right," she a.s.serted. "Your Dilly--he's a perfect love, and I told him so--said I was to make myself perfectly at home. So I have a perfect right to be here, and a perfect right to hunt eggs; and if I could make that sentence more 'perfect,' I would do it." She tilted her head to one side and challenged a laugh with her eyes.

Charming Billy relaxed a bit, yanked the horse into a stall and tied him fast. "Yuh might tell me how it happened that you're here," he hinted, looking at her over the saddle. He had apparently forgotten that he had intended leaving the horse saddled until he had rested and eaten--and truly it would be a shame to hurry from so unexpected a tete-a-tete.

Miss Bridger pulled a spear of blue-joint hay from a crack in the wall and began breaking it into tiny pieces. "It sounds funny, but Mr.

Dill bought father out to get a cook. The way it was, father has been simply crazy to try his luck up in Klond.y.k.e; it's just like him to get the fever after everybody else has had it and recovered. When the whole country was wild to go he turned up his nose at the idea. And now, mind you, after one or two whom he knew came back with some gold, he must go and dig up a few million tons of it for himself! Your Dilly is rather bright, do you know? He met father and heard all about his complaint--how he'd go to the Klond.y.k.e in a minute if he could only get the ranch and Mama Joy and me off his hands--so what does Dilly do but buy the old ranch and hire Mama Joy and me to come here and keep house! Father, I am ashamed to say, was _abjectly_ grateful to get rid of his inc.u.mbrances, and he--he hit the trail immediately." She stopped and searched absently with her fingers for another spear of hay.

"Do you know, Mr. Boyle, I think men are the most irresponsible creatures! A _woman_ wouldn't turn her family over to a neighbor and go off like that for three or four years, just chasing a sunbeam.