Going Some | Page 8

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 railroad. He's a guest."
"Oh!"
"Yep! He's intercollegit champeen of Yale."
"Yale?" repeated the near-sighted man. "Don't know's I ever been there. Much of a town?"
"I ain't never travelled East myself, but Miss Jean and the little yaller-haired girl say he's the fastest man in the world. I figgered we might rib up something with the Centipede." Still Bill winked sagely.
"See here, do you reckon he'd run?"
"Sure! He's a friend of the boss. And he'll run on the level, too. He can't be nothin' like Humpy."
"If he is, I'll git him," said the cowboy. "Oh, I'll git him sure, guest or no guest. But how about the phonograph?"
"The Centipede will put it up quick enough; there ain't no sentiment in that outfit."
"Then it sounds good."
"An' it'll work. Gallagher's anxious to trim us again. Some folks can't stand prosperity."
Willie spat unerringly at a grasshopper. "Lord!" said he, "it's too good! It don't sound possible."
"Well, it is, and our man will be here this evenin'. Watch out for Nigger Mike, and when he drives up let's give this party a welcome that'll warm his heart on the jump. There's nothin' like a good impression."
"I'll be on the job," assured Willie. "But I state right here and now, if we do get a race there ain't a-goin' to be no chance of our losin' for a second time."
And Stover went on his way to spread the tidings.
It was growing dark when the rattle of wheels outside the ranch- house brought the occupants to the porch in time to see Nigger Mike halt