Wyoming | Page 6

of his own. "I suspicioned that might be your name when
I say y'u come a-sailin' down from heaven to gather me up like Enoch."
"Why?"
"Well, ma'am, I happened to drift in to Gimlet Butte two or three days
ago, and while I was up at the depot looking for some freight a train
sashaid in and side tracked a flat car. There was an automobile on that
car addressed to Miss Helen Messiter. Now, automobiles are awful
seldom in this country. I don't seem to remember having seen one
before."
"I see. You're quite a Sherlock Holmes. Do you know anything more
about me?"
"I know y'u have just fallen heir to the Lazy D. They say y'u are a
schoolmarm, but I don't believe it."
"Well, I am." Then, "Why don't you believe it?" she added.
He surveyed her with his smile audacious, let his amused eyes wander
down from the mobile face with the wild-rose bloom to the slim young
figure so long and supple, then serenely met her frown.
" Y'u don't look it."
" No? Are you the owner of a composite photograph of the teachers of
the country?"
He enjoyed again his private mirth. "I should like right well to have the
pictures of some of them."

She glanced at him sharply, but he was gazing so innocently at the
purple Shoshones in the distance that she could not give him the snub
she thought he needed.
"You are right. My name is Helen Messiter," she said, by way of
stimulating a counter fund of information. For, though she was a young
woman not much given to curiosity, she was aware of an interest in this
spare, broad-shouldered youth who was such an incarnation of bronzed
vigor.
"Glad to meet y'u, Miss Messiter," he responded, and offered his firm
brown hand in Western fashion.
But she observed resentfully that he did not mention his own name. It
was impossible to suppose that he knew no better, and she was driven
to conclude that he was silent of set purpose. Very well! If he did not
want to introduce himself she was not going to urge it upon him. In a
businesslike manner she gave her attention to eating up the dusty miles.
"Yes, ma'am. I reckon I never was more glad to death to meet a lady
than I was to meet up with y'u," he continued, cheerily. "Y'u sure
looked good to me as y'u come a-foggin' down the road. I fair had been
yearnin' for company but was some discouraged for fear the invitation
had miscarried." He broke off his sardonic raillery and let his level gaze
possess her for a long moment. "Miss Messiter, I'm certainly under an
obligation to y'u I can't repay. Y'u saved my life," he finished gravely.
"Nonsense."
"Fact."
"It isn't a personal matter at all," she assured him, with a touch of
impatient hauteur.
"It s a heap personal to me."
In spite of her healthy young resentment she laughed at the way in
which he drawled this out, and with a swift sweep her boyish eyes took
in again his compelling devil-may-care charm. She was a tenderfoot,
but intuition as well as experience taught her that he was unusual
enough to be one of ten thousand. No young Greek god's head could
have risen more superbly above the brick-tanned column of the neck
than this close-cropped curly one. Gray eyes, deep and unwavering and
masterful, looked out of a face as brown as Wyoming. He was got up
with no thought of effect, but the tigerish litheness, the picturesque
competency of him, spake louder than costuming.

"Aren't you really hurt worse than you pretend? I'm sure your ankle
ought to be attended to as soon as possible."
"Don't tell me you're a lady doctor, ma'am," he burlesqued his alarm.
"Can you tell me where the nearest ranch house is?" she asked,
ignoring his diversion.
"The Lazy D is the nearest, I reckon."
"Which direction?"
"North by east, ma'am."
"Then I'll take the most direct road to it.
"In that case I'll thank y'u for my ride and get out here."
"But--why?"
He waved a jaunty hand toward the recent battlefield. "The Lazy D lies
right back of that hill. I expect, mebbe, those wolves might howl again
if we went back."
"Where, then, shall I take you?"
"I hate to trouble y'u to go out of your way.
"I dare say, but I'm going just the same," she told him, dryly.
"If you're right determined " He interrupted himself to point to the
south. "Do y'u see that camel-back peak over there?"
"The one with the sunshine on its lower edge?"
"That's it, Miss Messiter. They call those two humps the Antelope
Peaks. If y'u can