The Flying Us Last Stand | Page 5

the
sake of staying together on the ranch. I cannot say that they did it
uncomplainingly--for the bunk-house was saturated to the ridge-pole
with their maledictions while they compared blistered hands and
pitchfork callouses, and mourned the days that were gone; the days
when they rode far and free and scorned any work that could not be
done from the saddle. But they stayed, and they did the ranch work as
well as the range work, which is the main point.
They became engaged to certain girls who filled their dreams and all
their waking thoughts--but they never quite came to the point of
marrying and going their way. Except Pink, who did marry impulsively
and unwisely, and who suffered himself to be bullied and called Percy
for seven months or so, and who balked at leaving the Flying U for the
city and a vicarious existence in theaterdom, and so found himself free
quite as suddenly as he had been tied.
They intended to marry and settle down--sometime. But there was
always something in the way of carrying those intentions to fulfillment,
so that eventually the majority of the Happy Family found themselves
not even engaged, but drifting along toward permanent bachelorhood.
Being of the optimistic type, however, they did not worry; Pink having

set before them a fine example of the failure of marriage and having
returned with manifest relief to the freedom of the bunk-house.
CHAPTER 2.
ANDY GREEN'S NEW ACQUAINTANCE
Andy Green, chief prevaricator of the Happy Family of the Flying
U--and not ashamed of either title or connection-- pushed his new
Stetson back off his untanned forehead, attempted to negotiate the
narrow passage into a Pullman sleeper with his suitcase swinging from
his right hand, and butted into a woman who was just emerging from
the dressingroom. He butted into her so emphatically that he was
compelled to swing his left arm out very quickly, or see her go
headlong into the window opposite; for a fullsized suitcase propelled
forward by a muscular young man may prove a very efficient
instrument of disaster, especially if it catches one just in the hollow
back of the knee. The woman tottered and grasped Andy convulsively
to save herself a fall, and so they stood blocking the passage until the
porter arrived and took the suitcase from Andy with a tip-inviting
deference.
Andy apologized profusely, with a quaint, cowpunchery phrasing that
caused the woman to take a second look at him. And, since Andy Green
would look good to any woman capable of recognizing--and
appreciating--a real man when she saw him, she smiled and said it
didn't matter in the least.
That was the beginning of the acquaintance. Andy took her by her
plump, chiffon-veiled arm and piloted her to her seat, and he afterward
tipped the porter generously and had his own belongings deposited in
the section across the aisle. Then, with the guile of a foreign diplomat,
he betook himself to the smoking-room and stayed there for three
quarters of an hour. He was not taking any particular risk of losing the
opportunity of an unusually pleasant journey, for the dollar he had
invested in the goodwill of the porter had yielded the information that
the lady was going through to Great Falls. Since Andy had boarded the

train at Harlem there was plenty of time to kill between there and Dry
Lake, which was his destination.
The lady smiled at him rememberingly when finally he seated himself
across the aisle from her, and without any serious motive Andy smiled
back. So presently they were exchanging remarks about the journey.
Later on, Andy went over and sat beside her and conversation began in
earnest. Her name, it transpired, was Florence Grace Hallman. Andy
read it engraved upon a card which added the information that she was
engaged in the real estate business--or so the three or four words
implied. "Homemakers' Syndicate, Minneapolis and St. Paul," said the
card. Andy was visibly impressed thereby. He looked at her with swift
appraisement and decided that she was "all to the good."
Florence Grace Hallman was tall and daintily muscular as to figure.
Her hair was a light yellow--not quite the shade which peroxide gives,
and therefore probably natural. Her eyes were brown, a shade too close
together but cool and calm and calculating in their gaze, and her
eyebrows slanted upward a bit at the outer ends and were as heavy as
beauty permitted. Her lips were very red, and her chin was very firm.
She looked the successful business woman to her fingertips, and she
was eminently attractive for a woman of that self-assured type.
Andy was attractive also, in a purely Western way. His gray eyes were
deceivingly candid and his voice was pleasant with a little, humorous