Wild Youth | Page 9

you don't look like a Methodist. You look like,"--innocence
showed in his eye; there was no ulterior purpose in his face, "you look
like one of the bad McMahon lot of claim-jumpers over there in the
foothills. I suppose that seems so, only because ranchman aren't
generally pious. Well, in the same way, Giggles doesn't really look like
a ranchman; but he's every bit as good a ranchman as you are a
Christian and a Methodist!"

The Young Doctor looked the old man in the face with such a
semblance of honesty that he succeeded in disarming a dangerous
suspicion of mockery --dangerous, if he was to continue family
physician at Tralee. "Ah," he suddenly remarked, "there comes Orlando
now!" He pointed to a spot about half a mile away, where a horseman
could be seen cantering slowly towards Tralee.
A moment afterwards, from his buggy, the Young Doctor said: "Mrs.
Mazarine must be left alone until I see her again. She must not be
disturbed. The half-breed woman can look after her. I've told her what
to do. You'll keep to another room, of course."
"There's a bunk in that room where I could sleep," said the other, with a
note of protest.
"I'm afraid that, in our patient's interest, you must do what I say," the
other insisted, with a friendly smile which caused him a great effort. "If
I make her bloom again, that will suit you, won't it?"
A look of gloating came into the other's eyes: "Let it go at that," he said.
"Mebbe I'll take her over to the sea before the wheat-harvest."
Out on the Askatoon trail, the Young Doctor ruminated over what he
had seen and heard at Tralee. "That old geezer will get an awful jolt
one day," he said to himself. "If that girl should wake! Her eyes--if
somebody comes along and draws the curtains! She hasn't the least idea
of where she is or what it all means. All she knows is that she's a
prisoner in some strange, savage country and doesn't know its language
or anybody at all--as though she'd lost her memory. Any fellow, young,
handsome and with enough dash and colour to make him romantic
could do it. . . . Poor little robin in the snow!" he added, and looked
back towards Tralee.
As he did so, the man from Slow Down Ranch cantering towards
Tralee caught his eye. "Louise-Orlando," he said musingly; then, with a
sudden flick of the reins on his horse's back, he added abruptly, almost
sternly, "By the great horn spoons, no!"

Thus when his prophecy took concrete form, he revolted from it. A
grave look came into his face.

CHAPTER IV
TWO SIDES TO A BARGAIN
As the Young Doctor had said, Orlando Guise did not look like a real,
simon-pure "cowpuncher." He had the appearance of being dressed for
the part, like an actor who has never mounted a cayuse, in a Wild West
play. Yet on this particular day,--when the whole prairie country was
alive with light, thrilling with elixir from the bottle of old Eden's
vintage, and as comfortable as a garden where upon a red wall the
peach-vines cling--he seemed far more than usual the close-fitting,
soil-touched son of the prairie. His wide felt hat, turned up on one side
like a trooper's, was well back on his head; his pinkish brown face was
freely taking the sun, and his clear, light-blue eyes gazed ahead
unblinking in the strong light. His forehead was unwrinkled--a rare
thing in that prairie country where the dry air corrugates the skin; his
light-brown hair curled loosely on the brow, graduating back to closer,
crisper curls which in their thickness made a kind of furry cap. It was
like the coat of a French poodle, so glossy and so companionable was it
to the head. A bright handkerchief of scarlet was tied loosely around his
throat, which was even a little more bare than was the average
ranchman's; and his thick, much-pocketed flannel shirt, worn in place
of a waistcoat and coat, was of a shade of red which contrasted and yet
harmonized with the scarlet of the neckerchief. He did not wear the
sheepskin leggings so common among the ranchmen of the West, but a
pair of yellowish corduory riding-breeches, with boots that laced from
the ankle to the knee. These boots had that touch of the theatrical which
made him more fantastic than original in the eyes of his fellow-citizens.
Also he wore a ring with a star-sapphire, which made him incongruous,
showy and foppish, and that was a thing not easy of forgiveness in the
West. Certainly the West would not have tolerated him as far as it did,
had it not been for three things: the extraordinary