Mac drifted in after the disciplining.As foreman it was fitting that he should be discreetly ignorant of what had occurred, but he could not help saying:
"That y'u I heard singing, Reddy? Seems to me y'u had ought to take that voice into grand opera.The way y'u straddle them high notes is a caution for fair.What was it y'u was singing? Sounded like 'Would I were far from here, love.'""Y'u go to hell," choked Reddy, rushing past him from the bunkhouse.
McWilliams looked round innocently."I judge some of y'u boys must a-been teasing Reddy from his manner.Seemed like he didn't want to sit down and talk.""I shouldn't wonder but he'll hold his conversations standing for a day or two," returned Missou gravely.
At the end of the laugh that greeted this Mac replied:
Well, y'u boys want to be gentle with him." "He's so plumb tender now that I reckon he'll get along without any more treatment in that line from us," drawled Frisco.
Mac departed laughing.He had an engagement that recurred daily in the dusk of the evening, and he was always careful to be on time.The other party to the engagement met him at the kitchen door and fell with him into the trail that led to Lee Ming's laundry.
"What made you late?" she asked.
"I'm not late, honey.I seem late because you're so anxious," he explained.
"I'm not," protested Nora indignantly."If you think you're the only man on the place, Jim McWilliams ""Sho! Hold your hawsses a minute, Nora, darling.A spinster like y'u--" "You think you're awful funny--writing in my autograph album that a spinster's best friend is her powder box.I like Mr.Halliday's ways better.
He's a perfect gentleman."
"I ain't got a word to say against Denver, even if he did write in yourbook,
"'Sugar is sweet, The sky is blue, Grass is green And so are you.' I reckon, being a perfect gentleman, he meant--""You know very well you wrote that in yourself and pretended it was Mr.Halliday, signing his name and everything.It wasn't a bit nice of you." "Now do I look like a forger?" he wanted to know with innocence onhis cherubic face.
"Anyway you know it was mean.Mr.Halliday wouldn't do such a thing.You take your arm down and keep it where it belongs, Mr.McWilliams.""That ain't my name, Nora, darling, and I'd like to know where my arm belongs if it isn't round the prettiest girl in Wyoming.What's the use of being engaged if--""I'm not sure I'm going to stay engaged to you," announced the young woman coolly, walking at the opposite edge of the path from him.
"Now that ain't any way to talk "
"You needn't lecture me.I'm not your wife and I don't think I'm going to be," cut in Nora, whose temper was ruffled on account of having had to wait for him as well as for other reasons.
"Y'u surely wouldn't make me sue y'u for breach of promise, would y'u?" he demanded, with a burlesque of anxiety that was the final straw.
Nora turned on her heel and headed for the house.
"Now don't y'u get mad at me, honey.I was only joking," he explained as he pursued her.
"You think you can laugh at me all you please.I'll show you that you can't," she informed him icily.
"Sho! I wasn't laughing at y'u.What tickled me--""I'm not interested in your amusement, Mr.McWilliams.""What's the use of flying out about a little thing like that? Honest, I don't even know what you're mad at me for," the perplexed foreman averred.
"I'm not mad at you, as you call it.I'm simply disgusted."And with a final "Good night" flung haughtily over her shoulder Miss Nora Darling disappeared into the house.
Mac took off his hat and gazed at the door that had been closed in his face.He scratched his puzzled poll in vain.
"I ce'tainly got mine good and straight just like Reddy got his.But what in time was it all about? And me thinkin' I was a graduate in the study of the ladies.I reckon I never did get jarred up so.It's plumb discouraging."If he could have caught a glimpse of Nora at that moment, lying on her bed and crying as if her heart would break, Mac might have found the situation less hopeless.
