for his feet and sat him down so dexterously that he forgot what he did think.
"Say, Boss!" yelled Jumbo from the inside of the tent where he was slicing a mountain of bacon for breakfast, "can't we move along to Prairie Dog Creek before them blame girls begin putterin' around here, smellin' my biscuits and quotin' po'try?"
"Five or six days' riding here, yet," replied the Boss soberly. "I guess Mary won't bother you much, and the boys seem to worry their meals down pretty well at the ranch."
"You bet!" agreed Bunch fervently. "Why, there wasn't a single fly in my coffee tonight. It almost turns me dead set against Jumbo's cookin'." For whenever the wagon camped near the home ranch, the boys ate their dinners at the ranch-house, and woe it was to the larder thereof and to the disposition of the Irish cook.
The Boss didn't stay very long that night, but before he left he gave Slim a sack of tobacco and loaned Pink five dollars, carefully making a note of it in his memorandum book. That was why it was such a pleasure to borrow of the Boss. He knew you were square and expected to have you pay it back.
"Damn good fellow—the poor old fool" was the tribute Jumbo sent after him from the back of the grub wagon. "I don't see why in time that yellow-haired infidel can't stay back there with her grand opry–she ain't fit to turn loose. How do you reckon she ever got on the stage, Bunch?"
"Beats me" grunted Bunch. "It takes some shoutin', believe me."
Bunch was authority on grand opera. Once, as a wild experiment when on a trip to the city with cattle, he had sat on the ceiling in "nigger heaven" and listened heroically to three hours of it, and his lurid descriptions had ever after been a standard source of entertainment at the wagon.
"Yes, sir, it beats me" he added thoughtfully.
"Some rich duck—liked her hair, I reckon" offered Slim insinuatingly.
There was silence. Nobody believed that. But they all hated her so thoroughly they wouldn't say so. No one but a mighty straight girl could claim the friendship of the Old Boss's little freckled-faced honest-hearted daughter Mary.
Pink had been head over heels in love with Mary ever since he came to the "U Cross" outfit; but Mary had told him frankly that he was an idiot, so when she engaged herself to a long-legged lawyer who fell off his horse every time he came down to the ranch, it was all right. Mary was on the square. The other girl wasn't—there was the rub.
That night after he left the wagon, Jim Denton rode slowly around in the hills with loose reins, letting his horse follow the inter-crossing cow-paths, scarce knowing where he went. Every time Mary came back it freshened the old hurt of the other girl who had come with her five years ago—the girl who had fooled him, but the girl who had given rise to such keen longing in his heart that he could not outgrow the pain, even though he realized that he had been made a fool of. She had been so sweet and happy and full of life, and different from the girls in his life before; and when she had let him hold her in his arms—and kiss her, he was positive, even through the wonder of it, that she loved him. That was five years ago, but he spurred his surprised horse sharply as he remembered it, and galloped back to the big ranch-house by a short cut.
He did not see the girl until the next night at supper, for they were branding at one of the lower ranches and he did not get home for dinner. Supper was late that night. Usually the Boss sat at the head of the long table, but tonight the big coyote-skin chair was left for Mary's father, so the Boss sat at the foot. The boys looked him over with slanted eyes of professional criticism, and found him just as always, quiet and sunburned, only a little smoother even as they themselves, because Mary Freckles was back again. But there was a troubled question in their eyes—"would the Boss be game?"
For they had seen the girl at noon-time and she was better to look at than ever. She remembered to ask about Bunch's hand-made spurs which lay nearer to his heart than anything else in the world, and she inquired about Slim's ankle that he had turned so badly five years ago, and asked if Pink's pinto ever got over limping from stepping in a gopher hole. So right down in their hearts they had all agreed with what the "Flying E" Rep said out loud when they rode back to the wagon:
