Ellinor opened her basket and spread its tempting wares with pretty hostly care—or is there such a word as hostessly?

“There! All ready, Mr.——I declare, this is too absurd! We don’t even know each other’s names!” Her conscious eye fell upon the ampleness of the feast—amazing, since it purported to have been put up for one alone; and her face lit up with mischievous delight. She curtsied. “If you please, I’m the Ultimate Consumer!”

He rose, bowing gravely.

“I am the Personal Devil. Glad to meet you.”

“Oh! I’ve heard of you!” remarked the Ultimate Consumer sweetly. She sat down and extended her hand across the spotless linen. “Mr. Lake says——”

The Personal Devil flushed. It was not because of the proffered hand, which he took unhesitatingly and held rather firmly. The blush was unmistakably caused by anger.

“There is no connection whatever,” he stated, grimly enough, “between the truth and Mr. Lake’s organs of speech.”

“Oh!” cried the Ultimate Consumer triumphantly. “So you’re Mr. Beebe?”

“Bransford—Jeff Bransford,” corrected the Personal Devil crustily. He wilfully relapsed to his former slipshod speech. “Beebe, he’s gone to the Pecos work, him and Ballinger. Mr. John Wesley Also-Ran Pringle’s gone to Old Mexico to bring back another bunch of black, long-horned Chihuahuas. You now behold before you the last remaining Rose of Rosebud. But, why Beebe?”

“Why does Mr. Lake hate all of you so, Mr. Bransford?”

“Because we are infamous scoundrels. Why Beebe?”

“I can’t eat with one hand, Mr. Bransford,” she said demurely. He looked at the prisoned hand with a start and released it grudgingly. “Help yourself,” said his hostess cheerfully. “There’s sandwiches, and roast beef and olives, for a mild beginning.”

“Why Beebe?” he said doggedly.

“Help yourself to the salad and then please pass it over this way. Thank you.”

“Why Beebe?”

“Oh, very well then! Because of the little eohippus, you know—and other things you said.”

“I see!” said the aggrieved Bransford. “Because I’m not from Ohio, like Beebe, I’m not supposed——”

“Oh, if you’re going to be fussy! I’m from California myself, Mr. Bransford. Out in the country at that. Don’t let’s quarrel, please. We were having such a lovely time. And I’ll tell you a secret. It’s ungrateful of me, and I ought not to; but I don’t care—I don’t like Mr. Lake much since we came on this trip. And I don’t believe——” She paused, pinkly conscious of the unconventional statement involved in this sudden unbelief.

“——what Lake says about us?” A much-mollified Bransford finished the sentence for her.

She nodded. Then, to change the subject:

“You do speak cowboy talk one minute—and all booky, polite and proper the next, you know. Why?”

“Bad associations,” said Bransford ambiguously. “Also for ’tis my nature to, as little dogs they do delight to bark and bite. That beef sure tastes like more.”

“And now you may smoke while I pack up,” announced the girl when dessert was over, at long last. “And please, there is something I want to ask you about. Will you tell me truly?”

“Um—you sing?”

“Yes—a little.”

“If you will sing for me afterward?”

“Certainly. With pleasure.”

“All right, then. What’s the story about?”

Ellinor gave him her eyes. “Did you rob the post-office at Escondido—really?”

Now it might well be embarrassing to be asked if you had committed a felony; but there was that behind the words of this naÏve query—in look, in tone, in mental attitude—an unflinching and implicit faith that, since he had seen fit to do this thing, it must needs have been the right and wise thing to do, which stirred the felon’s pulses to a pleasant flutter and caused a certain tough and powerful muscle to thump foolishly at his ribs. The delicious intimacy, the baseless faith, was sweet to him.

“Sure, I did!” he answered lightly. “Lake is one talkative little man, isn’t he? Fie, fie! But, shucks! What can you expect? ‘The beast will do after his kind.’”

“And you’ll tell me about it?”

“After I smoke. Got to study up some plausible excuses, you know.”

She studied him as she packed. It was a good face—lined, strong, expressive, vivid; gay, resolute, confident, alert—reckless, perhaps. There were lines of it disused, fallen to abeyance. What was well with the man had prospered; what was ill with him had faded and dimmed. He was not a young man—thirty-seven, thirty-eight—(she was twenty-four)—but there was an unquenchable boyishness about him, despite the few frosty hairs at his temples. He bore his hard years jauntily: youth danced in his eyes. The explorer nodded to herself, well pleased. He was interesting—different.

The tale suffered from Bransford’s telling, as any tale will suffer when marred by the inevitable, barbarous modesty of its hero. It was a long story, cozily confidential; and there were interruptions. The sun was low ere it was done.

“Now the song,” said Jeff, “and then——” He did not complete the sentence; his face clouded.

“What shall I sing?”

“How can I tell? What you will. What can I know about good songs—or anything else?” responded Bransford in sudden moodiness and dejection—for, after the song, the end of everything! He flinched at the premonition of irrevocable loss.

The girl made no answer. This is what she sang. No; you shall not be told of her voice. Perhaps there is a voice that you remember, that echoes to you through the dusty years. How would you like to describe that?

Jeff’s back was to a tree, his hat over his eyes. He pushed it up.

“Thank you,” he said; and then, quite directly: “Are you rich?”

“Not—very,” said Ellinor, a little breathless at the blunt query.

“I’m going to be rich,” said Jeff steadily.

“‘I’m going to be a horse,’ quoth the little eohippus.” The girl retorted saucily, though secretly alarmed at the import of this examination.

“Ex-actly. So that’s settled. What is your name?”

“Hoffman.”

“Where do you live, Hoffman?”

“Ellinor,” supplemented the girl.

“Ellinor, then. Where do you live, Ellinor?”

“In New York—just now. Not in town. Upstate. On a farm. You see, grandfather’s growing old—and he wanted father to come back.”

“New York’s not far,” said Jeff.

A sudden panic seized the girl. What next? In swift, instinctive self-defense she rose and tripped to the tree where lay her neglected sketch-book, bent over—and started back with a little cry of alarm. With a spring and a rush, Jeff was at her side, caught her up and glared watchfully at bush and shrub and tufted grass.

“Mr. Bransford! Put me down!”

“What was it? A rattlesnake?”

“A snake? What an idea! I just noticed how late it was. I must go.”

Crestfallen, sheepishly, Mr. Bransford put her down, thrust his hands into his pockets, tilted his chin and whistled an aggravating little trill from the Rye twostep.

“Mr. Bransford!” said Ellinor haughtily.

Mr. Bransford’s face expressed patient attention.

“Are you lame?”

Mr. Bransford’s eye estimated the distance covered during the recent snake episode, and then gave to Miss Hoffman a look of profound respect. His shoulders humped up slightly; his head bowed to the stroke: he stood upon one foot and traced the Rainbow brand in the dust with the other.

“I told you all along I wasn’t hurt,” he said aggrieved. “Didn’t I, now?”

“Are you lame?” she repeated severely, ignoring his truthful saying.

“‘Not—very.’” The quotation marks were clearly audible.

“Are you lame at all?”

“No, ma’am—not what you might call really lame. Uh—no, ma’am.”

“And you deceived me like that!” Indignation checked her. “Oh, I am so disappointed in you! That was a fine, manly thing for you to do!”

“It was such a lovely time,” observed the culprit doggedly. “And such a chance might never happen again. And it isn’t my fault I wasn’t hurt, you know. I’m sure I wish I was.”

She gave him an icy glare.

“Now see what you’ve done! Your men haven’t come and you won’t stay with Mr. Lake. How are you going to get home? Oh, I forgot—you can walk, as you should have done at first.”

The guilty wretch wilted yet further. He shuffled his feet; he writhed; he positively squirmed. He ventured a timid upward glance. It seemed to give him courage. Prompted, doubtless, by the same feeling which drives one to dive headlong into dreaded cold water, he said, in a burst of candor:

“Well, you see, ma’am, that little horse now—he really ain’t got far. He got tangled up over there a ways——”

The girl wheeled and shot a swift, startled glance at the little eohippus on the hillside, who had long since given over his futile struggles and was now nibbling grass with becoming resignation. She turned back to Bransford. Slowly, scathingly, she looked him over from head to foot and slowly back again. Her expression ran the gamut—wonder, anger, scorn, withering contempt.

“I think I hate you!” she flamed at him.

Amazement triumphed over the other emotions then—a real amazement: the detected impostor had resumed his former debonair bearing and met her scornful eye with a slow and provoking smile.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” he said reassuringly. “On the contrary, you don’t hate me at all!”

“I’m going home, anyhow,” she retorted bitterly. “You may draw your own conclusions.”

Still, she did not go, which possibly had a confusing effect upon his inferences.

“Just one minute, ma’am, if you please. How did you know so pat where the little black horse was? I didn’t tell you.”

Little waves of scarlet followed each other to her burning face.

“I’m not going to stay another moment. You’re detestable! And it’s nearly sundown.”

“Oh, you needn’t hurry. It’s not far.”

She followed his gesture. To her intense mortification she saw the blue smoke of her home campfire flaunting up from a gully not half a mile away. It was her turn to droop now. She drooped.

There was a painful silence. Then, in a far-off, hard, judicial tone:

“How long, ma’am, if I may ask, have you known that the little black horse was tangled up?”

Miss Ellinor’s eyes shifted wildly. She broke a twig from a mahogany bush and examined the swelling buds with minutest care.

“Well?” said her ruthless inquisitor sternly.

“Since—since I went for your hat,” she confessed in a half whisper.

“To deceive me so!” Pain, grief, surprise, reproach, were in his words. “Have you anything to say?” he added sadly.

A slender shoe peeped out beneath her denim skirt and tapped on a buried boulder. Ellinor regarded the toetip with interest and curiosity. Then, half-audibly:

“We were having such a good time.... And it might never happen again!”

He captured both her hands. She drew back a little—ever so little; she trembled slightly, but her eyes met his frankly and bravely.

“No, no!... Not now.... Go, now, Mr. Bransford. Go at once. We will have a pleasant day to remember.”

“Until the next pleasant day,” said resolute Bransford, openly exultant. “But see here, now—I can’t go to Lake’s camp or to Lake’s ball”—here Miss Ellinor pouted distinctly—“or anything that is Lake’s. After your masked ball, then what?”

“New York; but it’s only so far—on the map.” She held her hands apart very slightly to indicate the distance. “On a little map, that is.”

“I’ll drop in Saturdays,” said Jeff.

“Do! I want to hear you sing the rest about the little eohippus.”

“If you’ll sing about Sandy!” suggested Jeff.

“Why not? Good-by now—I must go.”

“And you won’t sing about Sandy to any one else?”

The girl considered doubtfully.

“Why—I don’t know—I’ve known you for a very little while, if you please.” She gathered up her belongings. “But we’re friends?”

“No! No!” said Jeff vehemently. “You won’t sing it to any one else—Ellinor?”

She drew a line in the dust.

“If you won’t cross that line,” she said, “I’ll tell you.”

Mr. Bransford grasped a sapling with a firm clutch and shook it to try its strength.

“A bird in the bush is the noblest work of God,” he announced. “I’ll take a chance.”

Her eyes were shining.

“You’ve promised!” she said. She paused: when she spoke again her voice was low and a trifle unsteady. “I won’t sing about Sandy to—any one else—Jeff!”

Then she fled.

Like Lot’s wife, she looked back from the hillside. Jeff clung desperately to the sapling with one hand; from the other a handkerchief—hers—fluttered a good-by message. She threw him a farewell, with an ambiguous gesture.

It was late when Jeff reached Rosebud Camp. He unsaddled Nigger Baby, the little and not entirely gentle black horse, rather unobtrusively; but Johnny Dines sauntered out during the process, announcing supper.

“Huh!” sniffed Jeff. “S’pose I thought you’d wait until I come to get it?”

Nothing more alarming than tallies was broached during supper, however. Afterward, Johnny tilted his chair back and, through cigarette smoke, contemplated the ceiling with innocent eyes.

“Nigger Babe looks drawed,” he suggested.

“Uh-huh. Had one of them poor spells of his.”

Puff, puff.

“Your saddle’s skinned up a heap.”

“Run under a tree.”

Johnny’s look of innocence grew more pronounced.

“How’d you get your clothes so wet?”

“Rain,” said Jeff.

Puff, puff.

“You look right muddy too.”

“Dust in the air,” said Jeff.

“Ah!—yes.” Silence during the rolling of another cigarette. Then: “How’d you get that cut on your head?”

Jeff’s hand went to his head and felt the bump there. He regarded his fingers in some perplexity.

“That? Oh, that’s where I bit myself!” He stalked off to bed in gloomy dignity.

Half an hour later Johnny called softly:

“Jeff!”

Jeff grunted sulkily.

“Camping party down near Mayhill. Lot o’ girls. I saw one of ’em. Young person with eyes and hair.”

Jeff grunted again. There was a long silence.

“Nice bear!” There was no answer.

“Good old bear!” said Johnny tearfully. No answer. “Mister Bear, if I give you one nice, good, juicy bite——”

“U—ugg—rrh!” said Jeff.

“Then,” said Johnny decidedly, “I’ll sleep in the yard.”

CHAPTER IV