"I saw her once or twice with her uncle," Billy admitted desperately.

"She's all you say she is and more too. Anything to please the children. Don't you ever stop talkin', Riley?"

"Not when I got somethin' like Hazel to talk about," declared the relentless Riley, warming to his subject. "Y'oughta notice her eyes once, Bill. Tell you, you never saw _eyes_ till you see hers. They're eyes, they are! Big and black and soft and eyewinkers long as a pony's. Fact. And she ain't lost a tooth. She's still got the whole thirty-four. You take my word for it, Bill, she's a whole lot different from other folks."

"She's two teeth different anyway. Most generally all other folks can crowd in their mouth are thirty-two."

"What's a tooth more or less between friends?" said the unabashed Riley. "She's got a whole mouthful, and when she smiles she shows 'em all."

"That's great," yawned Billy, closing his pocket-knife with a click.

"You forgot to say whether she's a good cook or not."

"She's a number one cook," Riley told him seriously. "Her coffee is coffee, lemme tell you, and she don't fry a steak to boot-leather neither. Not her. No. She broils it, she does. _Y'oughta_ taste her mashed potatoes. No lumps in 'em or grit or nothin', only the mealy old potato; and b.u.t.ter beets! My Gawd!"

"Mixes 'em up with the potato, huh?"

"Of course not, you jack--separate. And canned peas--separate.

Actually she cooks those peas so they're tender as fresh ones; tenderer, by gummy! Makes her own b.u.t.ter, too, in a churn."

"Well, well, in a churn. I never knew they made b.u.t.ter thataway."

"Shut up, Bill. You ain't got any soul. I stop at Walton's for a meal every chance I get. Y'oughta see her cookin' a meal, Bill. She rolls her sleeves up and she's got dimples in her elbows. She's a picture, and you can stick a pin in that."

"Why don't you marry the girl?"

"I've asked her," was the reply made without rancor. "She said, 'No thanks.'"

"That's one thing in her favor."

"Yeah, I think--Hey! what you tryin' to do, insult me?"

"Insult you, you tarrapin? You wouldn't know it if I did."

"If I wasn't so comfortable, I'd show you something," declared Riley Tyler, sliding farther down on the small of his long back. "But the heat has saved your life, William. Yeah, otherwise you'd be a corpse all bluggy in the middle of Main Street. I'm a wild wolf when I'm riled, you can gamble-- Yonder she comes. She didn't stay long."

Billy dug the Tyler shortribs with a hard elbow. "Where's your manners? Go over and untie the lady's team."

"Too far. She'd have 'em untied by the time I got there. Besides, I'm too comfortable. Another thing, I'd have to get up. No, no, I'll stay here."

Hazel Walton stepped into the buckboard, kicked the brake-lever and swung her team like a workman. The tall near mule laid back his long ears and planted both hind feet on the dashboard. _Smack! Smack!_ went the whip. The mule tucked his tail, shook his mean head and tried to jump through his collar. The brake-lever shot forward under the shove of the girl's straightened right leg. The sensible off mule threw his head to the left to ease the hard drag on his mouth as the girl swayed back on the near rein. The near mule, hearing the slither of the locked wheels behind him, and with his windpipe bent like a bow and his chin forced back to his chest, decided that fighting would avail him nothing and quieted at once.

"Regular driver, that girl," Billy said approvingly. "It ain't every woman can drive a pair of those big freight mules. I never knew she was like that."

"Lots of things you dunno," Riley hastened to say. "You didn't even know she was pretty."

Billy hopped across the sidewalk and ran out into the middle of Main Street. The mules, hard held, slid to a halt. Billy scooped up the package that had fallen from behind the seat and hurried up to the buckboard.

"Your tarp's slipped a little, ma'am," said he, stowing away the package without raising his eyes to Miss Walton, who was leaning over the back of the seat. "I'll tie it fast."

Not till the tarpaulin was fastened to his complete satisfaction did he look up. Then he realized that Riley Tyler had not told half the truth about Hazel Walton's eyes. True, they were big and black and soft, but they were deep too, deep as cool rock pools, and they looked at you steadily with a straight look that somehow made you wish that you had been a better boy.

Queer that he hadn't noticed this attribute before. But at none of the two or three times he had pa.s.sed the girl on Golden Bar's Main Street had she impressed him in the least. He could not have described her to save his life. Perhaps it was because he had not looked into her eyes before to-day. But he wasted no time thinking about that. He kept right on looking into her eyes.

"You don't come in town very often," was his sufficiently inane observation.

"Not very often," said she, and smiled.

Yes, there were the teeth. And weren't they white! He didn't know when he had seen such white teeth. And her mouth had a dimple near one corner. Now the dimple was gone. He wished it would appear once more.

"Do it again," he found himself saying like a fool.

She wrinkled her pretty forehead at him. "What?"

"Smile," he said, with a boldness that surprised himself.

It surprised Hazel Walton, surprised her so that she jerked around to the front, "kissed" to the mules and drove away without a word.

Billy stood quite still in the middle of Main Street, with his hat off, and looked after her a moment. Then he pulled on the hat with a jerk and returned to his packing case.

"What did she say to you?" Riley wanted to know.

"None of your business," was the ungracious reply.

"She left you sort of sudden," persisted Riley. "And why did you stand still in the middle of the street and look after her so forlorn and long?"

"I wasn't lookin' more than ten seconds," denied Billy, jarred off his balance for once in his life.

"Shucks, I had time to roll a cigarette, and smoke it to the b.u.t.t while you stood there nailed to the earth. Yeah. Tell you, Bill, you don't wanna let your feelings give you away so much. Bad business that is.

Somebody's bound to pick your pocket forty ways. Y'oughta play poker more. That would teach you self-control."

"Bluh," grunted Billy. "Think you're smart, don't you?"

"I know I am," returned Riley, crossing one knee over the other and diddling his foot up and down to the thin accompaniment of a tinkling spur-rowel. "I got eyes, I have. I can see through a piece of gla.s.s most generally. Oh, mush and milk, love's young dream, and when shall we meet again."

"Aw, h.e.l.l, shut up!" urged Billy, and shoved his friend off the packing case and went elsewhere hastily.

Riley first swore, then laughed and reseated himself on the case. Jack Murray, pa.s.sing by, stopped and sneered openly. It was obvious that Jack was in liquor.

"He don't care how much he picks on you, does he?" observed Jack.

Riley Tyler did not move hand or foot. But a subtle change took place.

Iron turning into steel undergoes such a metamorphosis. The sixth sense of an observing old gentleman across the street and directly in line with Jack Murray informed its owner of the sudden chill in the air. The observing old gentleman, whose name was Wildcat Simms, oozed backward through a doorway into the Old Hickory saloon.

"Why are you walking like a crab, Wildcat?" queried his friend the bartender.

"Because Jack Murray is talking to Riley Tyler."

The bartender, wise in his generation, was well able to fill in the rest for himself. He joined the old gentleman behind a window at one side of the line of fire.