Going Some | Page 8

at this moment."
"We may be gone before you return."
Young Chapin started. "You don't mean that, really?" Mrs. Keap
nodded her dark head. "It was all very well for me to chaperon Helen
on the way out from the East, but--it isn't exactly regular for me to play
that part here with other young people to look after."
"But you understand, of course--Jean must have explained to you.
Mother was called away suddenly, and she can't get back now. You
surely won't leave--you _can't_." Chapin added, hopefully: "Why, you
would break up Jean's party. You see, there's nobody around here to
take your place."
"But--"
"Nonsense! This is an unconventional country. What's wrong with you
as a chaperon, anyway? Nobody out here even knows what a chaperon
is. And I'll be back as soon as I can."
"Do you really think that would help?" Roberta's eyes laughed
humorously.
"I'm not thinking of the others, I'm thinking of myself," declared the
young man, boldly. "I don't want you to go before I return. You must
not! If you go, I--I shall follow you." He grasped her hand impulsively.
"Oh!" exclaimed the chaperon. "This makes it even more impossible.
Go! _Go!_" She pushed him away, her color surging. "Go to your old
Eleven X Ranch right away."

"But I mean it," he declared, earnestly. Then, as she retreated farther:
"It's no use, I sha'n't go now until--"
"You have known me less than a week!"
"That is long enough. Roberta--"
Mrs. Keap spoke with honest embarrassment. "Listen! Don't you see
what a situation this is? If Jean and Helen should ever discover--"
"Jean planned it all; even this."
Mrs. Keap stared at him in horrified silence.
"You do love me, Roberta?" Chapin undertook to remove the girl's
hands from her face, when a slight cough in the hall behind caused him
to turn suddenly in time to see Berkeley Fresno passing the open door.
"There! You see!" Mrs. Keap's face was tragic. "_You see!_" She
turned and fled, leaving the master of the ranch in the middle of the
floor, bewildered, but a bit inclined to be happy. A moment later the
plump face of Berkeley Fresno appeared cautiously around the
door-jamb. He coughed again gravely.
"I happened to be passing," said he. "You'll pardon me?"
"This is the most thickly settled spot in New Mexico!" Chapin declared,
with an artificial laugh, choking his indignation.
Fresno slowly brought his round body out from concealment.
"I came in to get a match."
"Why don't you carry matches?"
Fresno puffed complacently upon his pipe. "This," he mused, as his
host departed, "eliminates the chaperon, and that helps some."
Still Bill Stover lost no time in breaking the news to the boys.

"There's something comin' off," he advised Willie. "We've got another
foot-runner!"
If he had hoped for an outburst of rapture on the part of the little gun
man he was disappointed, for Willie shifted his holster, smiled evilly
through his glasses, and inquired, with ominous restraint:
"Where is he?"
Being the one man on the Flying Heart who had occasion to wear a gun,
Willie seldom smiled from a sense of humor. Here it may be said that,
deceived at first by his scholarly appearance, his fellow-laborers had
jibed at Willie's affectation of a swinging holster, but the custom had
languished abruptly. When it became known who he was, the other
ranch-hands had volubly declared that this was a free country, where a
man might exercise a wide discretion in the choice of personal
adornment; and as for them, they avowed unanimously that the practice
of packing a Colts was one which met with their most cordial
approbation. In time Willie's six-shooter had become accepted as a part
of the local scenery, and, like the scenery, no one thought of remarking
upon it, least of all those who best knew his lack of humor. He had
come to them out of the Nowhere, some four years previously, and
while he never spoke of himself, and discouraged reminiscence in
others, it became known through those vague uncharted channels by
which news travels on the frontier, that back in the Texas Panhandle
there was a limping marshal who felt regrets at mention of his name,
and that farther north were other men who had a superstitious dread of
undersized cow-men with spectacles. There were also stories of
lonesome "run-ins," which, owing to Willie's secretiveness and the
permanent silence of the other participants, never became more than
intangible rumors. But he was a good ranchman, attended to his
business, and the sheriff's office was remote, so Willie had worked on
unmolested.
"This here is a real foot-runner," said Stover.
"Exactly," agreed the other. "Where is he?"

"He'll be here this afternoon. Nigger Mike's bringin' him over from the