Wyoming | Page 9

store, where he
purchased a new scarlet bandanna for the occasion; also a cake of soap
with which to rout the alkali dust that had filtered into every pore of his
hands and face from a long ride across the desert.
Came supper and Texas simultaneously, the cow-puncher's face
scrubbed to an apple shine. At the last moment Collins defaulted, his
nerve completely gone. Since, however, he was a thrifty soul, he sold

his place to Soapy for ten dollars, and proceeded to invest the proceeds
in an immediate drunk.
During the first ten minutes of supper Miss Messiter did not appear,
and the two guardians who flanked her chair solicitously were the
object of much badinage.
"She got one glimpse of that red haid of Tex and the pore lady's took to
the sage," explained Yorky.
"And him scrubbed so shiny fust time since Christmas before the big
blizzard," sighed Doc Rogers.
"Shucks! She ain't scared of no sawed-off, hammered-down runt like
Texas, No, siree! Miss Messiter's on the absent list 'cause she's afraid
she cayn't resist the blandishments of Soapy. Did yo' ever hear about
Soapy and that Caspar hash slinger?"
"Forget it, Slim," advised Soapy, promptly. He had been engaged in
lofty and oblivious conversation with Texas, but he did not intend to
allow reminiscences to get under way just now.
At this opportune juncture arrived the mistress of the "gasoline bronc,"
neatly clad in a simple white lawn with blue trimmings. She looked like
a gleam of sunshine in her fresh, sweet youth; and not even in her own
school room had she ever found herself the focus of a cleaner, more
unstinted admiration. For the outdoors West takes off its hat reverently
to women worthy of respect, especially when they are young and
friendly.
Helen Messiter had come to Wyoming because the call of adventure,
the desire for experience outside of rutted convention, were stirring her
warm-blooded youth. She had seen enough of life lived in a parlor, and
when there came knocking at her door a chance to know the big,
untamed outdoors at first hand she had at once embraced it like a lover.
She was eager for her new life, and she set out skillfully to make these
men tell her what she wanted to know. To them, of course, it was an
old story, and whatever of romance it held was unconscious. But since
she wanted to talk of the West they were more than ready to please her.
So she listened, and drew them out with adroit questions when it was
necessary. She made them talk of life on the open range, of rustlers and
those who lived outside the law in the upper Shoshone country, of the
deadly war waging between the cattle and sheep industries.
"Are there any sheep near the Lazy D ranch?" she asked, intensely

interested in Soapy's tale of how cattle and sheep could no more be got
to mix than oil and water.
For an instant nobody answered her question; then Soapy replied, with
what seemed elaborate carelessness:
"Ned Bannister runs a bunch of about twelve thousand not more'n
fifteen or twenty miles from your place."
"And you say they are spoiling the range?"
"They're ce'tainly spoiling it for cows."
"But can't something be done? If my cows were there first I don't see
what right he has to bring his sheep there," the girl frowned.
The assembled company attended strictly to supper. The girl, surprised
at the stillness, looked round. "Well?"
"Now you're shouting, ma'am! That's what we say," enthused Texas,
spurring to the rescue.
"It doesn't much matter what you say. What do you do?" asked Helen,
impatiently. "Do you lie down and let Mr. Bannister and his kind drive
their sheep over you?"
"Do we, Soapy?" grinned Texas. Yet it seemed to her his smile was not
quite carefree.
"I'm not a cowman myself," explained Soapy to the girl. "Nor do I run
sheep. I--"
"Tell Miss Messiter what yore business is, Soapy," advised Yorky from
the end of the table, with a mouthful of biscuit swelling his cheeks.
Soapy crushed the irrepressible Yorky with a look, but that young man
hit back smilingly.
"Soapy, he sells soap, ma'am. He's a sorter city salesman, I reckon."
"I should never have guessed it. Mr. Sothern does not LOOK like a
salesman," said the girl, with a glance at his shrewd, hard,
expressionless face.
"Yes, ma'am, he's a first-class seller of soap, is Mr. Sothern," chuckled
the cow-puncher, kicking his friends gayly under the table.
"You can see I never sold HIM any, Miss Messiter," came back Soapy,
sorrowfully.
All this was Greek to the young lady from Kalamazoo. How was she to
know that Mr. Sothern had vended his soap in small cubes on