Prairie Flowers | Page 2

range! Not right in Timber City, or any of the other towns, but on a ranch, somewhere. We could stay there till we got tired of it, and then go to California, or New York, or Florida for a change. But we could call the ranch home, and live there most of the time. Now that you have closed out your business, there is no earthly reason why we should live in this place--it's neither east nor west, nor north, nor south--it's just half way between everything. I wish we would hear from that Mr. Carlson, or whatever his name is so we could go and look over his ranch the day after our anniversary."
"His name is Colston, and we have heard," smiled Endicott. "I got word this morning."
"Oh, what did he say?"
"He said to come and look the property over. That he was willing to sell, and that he thought there was no doubt about our being able to arrange satisfactory terms."
"Oh, Win, aren't you glad! You must sit right down after dinner and write him. Tell him we'll----"
"I wired him this afternoon to meet us in Timber City."
"Let's see," Alice chattered, excitedly, "it will take--one night to Chicago, and a day to St. Paul, and another day and night, and part of the next day--how many days is that? One, two nights, and two days and a half--that will give us ten days to sell the house and pack the furniture and ship it----"
"Ship it!" exclaimed the man. "We better not do any shipping till we buy the ranch. The deal may not go through----"
"Well, Mr. What's-his-name don't own the only ranch in Montana. If we don't buy his, we'll buy another one. You better see that Mr. Schwabheimer tomorrow--he's wanted this place ever since we bought it, and he's offered more than we paid."
"Oh, it won't be any trouble to sell the house. But, about shipping the furniture until we're sure----"
Alice interrupted impetuously: "We'll ship it right straight away--because when we get it out there we'll just have to buy a ranch to put it in!"
Endicott surrendered with a gesture of mock despair: "If that's the way you feel about it, I guess we'll have to buy. But, I'll give you fair warning--it will be up to you to help run the outfit. I don't know anything about the cattle business----"
"We'll find Tex! And we'll make him foreman--and then, when we get all settled I'll invite Margery Demming out for a long visit--I've picked out Margery for Tex--and we can put them up a nice house right near ours, and Margery and I can----"
"Holy Mackerel!" laughed Endicott. "Just like that! Little things don't matter at all--like the fact that we haven't any ranch yet to invite her to, and that she might not come if you did invite her, and if she did come she might not like the country or Tex, or he might not like her. And last of all, we may never find Tex. We've both written him a half a dozen times--and all the letters have been returned. If we had some ham, we'd have some ham and eggs, if we had some eggs!"
"There you go, with your old practicability! Anyhow, that's what we'll do--and if Tex don't like her I'll invite someone else, and keep on inviting until I find someone he does like--and as for her--no one could help loving the country, and no one could help loving Tex--so there!"
"I hope the course of their true love will run less tempestuously than ours did for those few days we were under the chaperonage of the Texan," grinned the man.
"Of course it will! It's probably very prosaic out there, the same as it is anywhere, most of the time. It was a peculiar combination of circumstances that plunged us into such a maelstrom of adventure. And yet--I don't see why you should hope for such a placid courtship for them. It took just that ordeal to bring out your really fine points. They were there all the time, dear, but I might never have known they were there. Why, I've lived over those few days, step by step, a hundred times! The wreck, the celebration at Wolf River--" she paused and shuddered, and her husband took up the sequence, mercilessly:
"And your ride with Purdy, and Old Bat thrusting the gun into my hand and urging me to follow--and when I looked up and saw you both on the rim of the bench and saw him drag you from your horse--then the mad dash up the steep trail, and the quick shot as he raised above the sage brush--and then, the fake lynching bee--only it was very real to me as I stood there in the moonlight under that cottonwood limb with a