For the few days following, the robbery and the rounding-up of the thieves were the talk of the district; but despite this, it was surprising how little The Vernock and District Advertiser had to say about it.

Phil openly commented on the peculiarity, but Jim just stuck his tongue in his cheek.

Neither McLean nor the wounded half-breed were seriously hurt, and in a week both were well again––the one going lamely about his business and the other in jail beside his fellows.

The trial was placed on the calendar for the next Assizes which had been arranged for the following month, when most of the Fall crops would be in and shipped, thereby leaving twelve good men and true free to devote some of their time to the requirements of law and justice.

Jim went back again to the Court House as Government Agent Thompson’s assistant. Phil kept to the forge, serious and tremendously earnest in following the calling he had been so strangely thrust into.

He could not fail to notice, day by day, the gradual change that was coming over Sol Hanson. Sol had not been drunk for weeks. He dressed himself much more neatly than formerly, although what it was exactly that gave him the smarter appearance, Phil could not make out until Smiler led him to understand by signs and grimaces that Sol now washed his face and hands mornings 191 and evenings, instead of every Sunday morning as formerly.

But there was something else.

Sol’s blue eyes had contracted a habit of gazing into the heart of the fire while he leaned abstractedly on the bellows handle. He became interested in the train arrivals. He posted letters and called every day at the post office for mail. Whether he got any or not Phil was unable to say definitely. But he got a sneaking suspicion after a while, that the soft-hearted, simple, big fellow was either answering letters through the Seattle Matrimonial Times, or corresponding with some lady friend. He felt convinced that Sol was badly, or rather, madly in love.

He probed the big Swede with the sharp end of a question now and again, but Sol was wonderfully impervious.

One day, Jim and Phil were strolling leisurely up Main Street from the Kenora Hotel where they had been having an early lunch together. The north train had just come in and a few drummers, some incoming Chinamen and a number of straggling passengers were spreading themselves for their different destinations, carrying grips and canvas bags with their samples and their belongings as the case might be.

Neither Jim nor Phil was paying any heed to what was a daily occurrence, until they were stopped by a buxom, fair-haired, blue-eyed maiden, with a pleasant smile on her big, innocent face. She was cheaply but becomingly dressed and filled her clothes with attractive generosity. As she laid down her two hand-bags, her smile broadened and beamed until it broke into a merry dimple on each of her cheeks and parted her ruddy lips to the exposure of a mouthful of fresh, creamy-looking, well-formed teeth.

There was no gainsaying who was the object of her smiles:––it was Jim Langford and Jim alone, and there was nothing left for either him or Phil to do but to doff their hats and wait the lady’s good pleasure.

She seemed in no hurry to speak.

As Jim gazed at her in surprise, waiting; her fingers––hard, red fingers they were––began to twist a little nervously about the painfully new gloves she carried, and her eyes dropped, looked up, and dropped again.

“Guess you don’t know me!” she ventured at last.

“No! I’m sorry! I can’t remember ever meeting you before,” he answered.

“Ho, ho!” muttered Phil under his breath.

“See you later, Jim!” he said loudly, making to move off.

“Here, you piker! You wait a minute.” Jim grabbed Phil’s coat sleeve.

The young lady’s cheeks began to take on the added attractiveness of a blush.

“You ain’t ever met me before, I know,” she said. “But don’t you know me by my picture?”

Jim shook his head in perplexity.

“I’d a-knowed you any place.”

For the first time in Phil’s experience of Jim, the latter stood abashed.

“You might have come to meet me at the train though. Guess you was just comin’. I wrote you three days since.”

“You did, eh! Well,––I never got your letter,” bantered Jim, recovering his composure.

She was a pretty piece of femininity, despite her poor language and her somewhat tawdry finery.

“I think you’re stringing me. But say!––I’m awful hungry, and I’ve been two days in the train.

“Ain’t you goin’ to get me some eats, Sol?”

“Sol!” exclaimed Jim with a gulp that spoke intense relief. “Why, my good girl, my name’s not Sol!”

“Oh, yes it is!” she answered bravely, with the smile fading. “I tell you I’d a-knowed you anywheres.”

“You’re making a mistake, dear lassie. My name is certainly not Sol.”

A glimmer of light was beginning to break in on Phil, but he kept that glimmer miserly to his inmost self.

“Yes it is! Oh, yes it is!” she said again, putting her hand on Jim’s arm, but with a peculiar little expression of uncertainty in her eyes.

“You can’t fool me, Sol Hanson,––and, say boy!––I’ve come a long ways for you, and I’m awful tired.”

“Hanson! Good Lord!” blurted out Jim. “Me––Sol Hanson! Lassie, lassie, I didna think I was so good looking. Are ye looking for Sol Hanson?”

The girl did not answer. A moisture began to gather in her big, blue eyes, and a tear toppled over.

Jim was all baby at once.

“Dinna greet!––there’s a good lass! Dinna greet here in the street,” he coaxed. “If it is Sol Hanson ye want, we can soon help ye to get him.”

The girl bent down and opened up one of her hand-bags, bringing out a large photograph, pasted on a creamy-coloured, gay-looking cardboard mount. She handed it to Jim, searching his face with her tear-dimmed eyes.

Jim gazed at it in bewilderment. Then he scratched his head and gazed again.

“Ain’t that your picture?” the young lady asked. “Don’t tell me that it ain’t, for it wouldn’t be true; and I came all this way because you wrote so nice and looked so big and good. I––I didn’t think you was a bluffer like––like other men.”

Her breath caught and she began to sob.

“My dear lassie,––I am bewildered,––confounded. I––I–––That is my photo, but where in all the world did ye get it from?”

The girl looked at him a little angrily, for she had pluck in plenty.

“Where do you think? I ain’t stole it. You sent it to me. Where else could I get it?”

Jim stood foolishly.

“I certainly never sent it. Why, woman!––I never saw ye before. I don’t know your name even. I––I–––

“There, there! Dinna start to greet again. We’ll fix you up, if you’ll only tell Phil and me your trouble.”

“––And your name ain’t Sol Hanson?” she queried, with a trembling lip.

“No!––I am sorry to say it is not!”

From her grip, the girl picked out a bundle of envelopes, well filled, and done up in lavender-coloured ribbon.

“––And––and you never wrote them letters to me?”

Jim looked at the writing and shook his head.

“No,––I never did!”

“––And––and you don’t know my name’s Betty Jornsen?”

“I didn’t, but I do now, Betty,” gallantly answered Jim, while Phil was beside himself trying to stifle his amusement one moment, and endeavouring to keep back his feelings of sympathy for the girl, the next.

Several passers-by turned round and stared in open interest at the strange meeting.

“Shut up your bag, lassie! Don’t show us any more o’ your gear,” appealed Jim in perturbation at the thought of what might come out next.

The buxom, fair-haired woman began to sob again. She turned and appealed to Phil.

“Oh, what am I to do, mister? I had a good job at Nixon’s CafÉ in Seattle. Sol wrote to me through the 195 Matrimonial Times. I wrote back to him. I sent him my picture and he sent me his––this one––and now he says he ain’t him.”

“That isn’t his photo, woman,––it is mine,” interrupted Jim.

“But he’s you,” she whimpered.

“Then who the mischief am I?” asked Jim in perplexity.

“You told me you had a house, and fruit trees, and a blacksmith’s shop, and plenty of money and, if I came to Canada, we’d get married. I throwed up my good job and I’ve come and now you say you ain’t him,” she sailed on breathlessly, her ample bosom labouring excitedly.

“Phil,” said Jim, aside. “How the devil do you suppose that big idiot got my photo? It looks like one taken off one I used to have, and lost.”

“I guess that is just what it is,” grinned Phil.

“Well,––we’ve got to see this little woman right, and incidentally give Sol Hanson the biggest fright he ever got in his natural.

“Miss––Miss Jornsen,––there’s a mistake somewhere. My name is Jim Langford, and that is my photograph; but I never sent it to you. We happen to know Sol Hanson though. He lives here all right. This gentleman works with him.

“Sol is a Swede?”

“Yes,––yes!” put in Betty, “same as I am.”

“I’m thinking he was afraid he wasn’t good-looking enough and he was scared to take chances, so he sent you my photo instead of one of his own,” he went on, without even a blush of conceit.

“And––and he ain’t such a good-looker as you?” she queried.

“Well,––well, of course, tastes differ. You might like him fine,” he grinned, with becoming modesty.

“But he’s got a house, and fruit trees, and a blacksmith shop, and he can work?” she asked.

“You bet! He’s well fixed. Come along and we’ll see him now. He will never be able to resist you.”

Betty perked up at the compliment.

Then nervously and timidly she set herself to rights, finally consenting to allow Jim and Phil to escort her to the smithy.

“You wait here!” instructed Jim at the corner of the block. “We’ll go and break the news to Sol. We’ll come back for you.

“Give me that picture, though. I have a word to say in his ear about that.”

Betty opened her bag, gazed fondly on Jim’s photo, then at him, before she slowly delivered it up.

Phil went into the smithy, hung up his coat, put on his apron and started in to work.

Jim followed him a few minutes later.

Sol Hanson was busy shoeing a horse. Jim went over to him.

“Here, Sol,” he cried, “come over and see this.”

The good-natured big fellow stopped his work and followed Jim to the dust-begrimed window.

Jim stuck the photograph under Sol’s nose.

“Do you know who that is?”

“Ya,––sure thing! You bet! Dam-good picture too, Jim!” he commented, with an innocence well assumed.

“Yes,––you certainly seem to like it. I can’t say it is very like you, you son-of-a-gun.”

“Me? No! Pretty like you though, Jim,” Sol stammered.

“Look here, you big lump of humanity;––what the devil do you mean by sending my photo all over the country and saying it is yours?”

“Me?––I ain’t––I didn’t––I–––”

“Cut it out, you big bluffer! You couldn’t lie decently to save your neck.”

Sol laughed at last.

“You not been goin’ for to get mad, Jim. Just a little joke I have on some girl. See!”

“Oh,––it was! Darned good joke for me––and you too!”

“Ya!––you see I find it one day on floor here. You drop it some time. I ain’t much of a swell looker for girls. All girls like face like yours. I get Vancouver man make me twelve pictures all same as this one. I send them just for little joke to girls I write to some time.”

Jim clutched at his own hair despairingly, as Phil furiously worked the bellows in his mirth.

“Great jumping CÆsar! Twelve! Are you going to start a harem?”

“Ach, no! Just have a little fun,––that’s all. You don’t go and been for to get mad at that.”

“Great fun! Great joke!” commented Jim, “but you’ve put your foot in it this time, old cock. One of these women is in town, looking for your scalp. She is asking everybody in Vernock where Sol Hanson hangs out.”

Sol’s big face grew a shade paler and his jaw dropped. He became excited.

“You––you didn’t been for to tell her,––Jim?”

“Sure I did! Why not? You’re going to marry her,––aren’t you? She’s telling everybody that.”

Sol, who had been standing with his big hands spread on his leather apron and his mouth agape, now showed signs of anxiety.

“But,––I––I––Which one is it, Jim? What she call herself?”

“Oh,––there are several, you blooming Mormon?”

Sol ran to his coat and pulled a bundle of letters and 198 miscellaneous photographs from the pocket. He handed them to Jim.

“Look at them,” he cried in excitement. “Tell me quick which one come.”

He mopped the perspiration from his brow. “By hell!––I guess I been got in a bad fix this time for sure.”

Jim slowly went over the documents and photographs.

“No! No! No! No!” he exclaimed, as he handed them back to Sol one by one.

“Not one,––by gosh, Jim! That pretty funny. Must be one, though. Sure you look at every one?”

“She’s not there, Sol. Trot out the others, old man.”

“I ain’t got no more, Jim. Honest! That every dam-one,––honest!

“Say,––maybe she tell you her name? Is it––is it Gracie Peters?”

“No!”

“Is it Sal Larigan?”

“No!”

“Betty–––”

“Yes,––that’s it! Betty––Betty Jornsen!”

“What? Betty she come? Jumpin’ Yiminy! Let me get my hat and coat. Where is she now? By gosh, Jim,––she dam-fine little peach.”

Sol became more and more excited. “I got her picture here. You miss it up. See!”

He ran over the photographs.

“There,” he exclaimed, holding it up admiringly.

It was Betty’s photograph, and a perfectly charming little picture she made too. But Jim had intentionally passed it over, for he was not through with Sol Hanson. He had still his pound of flesh to exact.

“Ain’t that dam-fine girl?” Sol went on. “See that, Phil! I been going to marry her. You bet! Tra-la-la!” 199 he half sang. “Come on!––let’s go and find her, Jim. Come on!”

“Wait a bit!––Bide a wee!” returned canny Scot Langford. “That isn’t the picture of the woman who is here for you.”

Sol’s face fell.

“What? But you say her name’s Betty Jornsen?”

“Yes! That is what she told me.”

“Well!––that’s Betty;––that’s her.”

“Oh, no it isn’t! Don’t you fool yourself, mister man. You’re mixed up in your women, Sol.”

“No siree! You look on back,” Sol returned triumphantly. “See that! ‘With love and kisses to Sol from Betty Jornsen.’”

Jim stood for a moment in silence.

“She nice little girl;––come up, maybe, to your shoulder?” queried Sol.

“No, Sol!––she’s six feet high if she is an inch.”

“She got fair hair and blue eyes; nice white teeth?”

“No, laddie!––she has carroty red hair; and her eyes, I mean her eye––for she has only one––is a bleary, grey colour.”

Sol commenced to perspire afresh, and to hop from one foot on to the other.

“Aw, you foolin’ me, Jim!”

“Devil a fool! It is too serious for that. She’s big; she’s got one eye; she’s lost her teeth in front and she is evidently a widow or she has three kids with her, two at her skirts and one in her arms.”

“Good Christopher Columbus!” exclaimed Sol, pulling at his hair.

“And, and, Sol,––she is coming here for you, in five minutes.”

The big blacksmith was in desperation.

“Sol,––you’re done;––you’re done brown,” Jim went on relentlessly, “and it serves you darned well right.”

“But, Jim,––you been a lawyer. She can’t go make me marry her?”

“Yes she can!”

“But she lie to me. She send me picture of nice girl and say it her and she Betty Jornsen. I tell her to come to me, from her picture,––see!”

“You big, blue-eyed, innocent baby! You’re done;––you’re in the soup;––your goose is cooked. Take it from me,––she’s got you, and got you good.

“Didn’t you send her my photo and say it was yours?”

Sol stood aghast.

“Aw,––that just a joke!” he persisted.

“Hadn’t she a perfect right to do the same thing to you? Well––evidently she has done it. Poor Sol!”

“But––but–––”

“It’s no good. There aren’t any buts to this. She is here. She is expecting Sol Hanson to be a fine looking fellow like me, and the poor thing is going to get a pie-faced, slop-eyed individual like yourself.

“Now, you’re expecting a pretty little blonde and you’re getting,––well,––something totally different.”

Jim slapped Sol on the back.

“Too bad! Take your medicine, though, old man! Be a sport! You’re distinctly up against it.”

Phil was metaphorically in knots by the furnace fire.

Sol rushed for his coat.

“No dam-fear!” he cried. “I go to coop first. She ain’t been going to run any bluff on Sol Hanson,––see! You tell her, and her carrots-hair, and her one eye, and her three dam-kids, to go plumb toboggan to hell.

“I come back sometime––maybe.”

Sol made a dart for the front door. Then he changed his mind and made for the back one. But he guessed the 201 wrong one––or, perhaps after all, it was the right one.

As he was going out, Betty Jornsen, with her two grips, came in and blocked up his exit.

She had evidently wearied of waiting at the corner, and had determined to investigate matters for herself.

Sol made to brush past. Suddenly he stopped. He looked at Betty. He stared. His eyes became big and nearly popped out of his head in his amazement.

Betty looked up at him in surprise.

They gaped thus at each other for a few seconds, then Sol staggered to the side of the door and leaned against it, breathing hard as if he had run a mile.

At last he found his tongue and himself, and straightened up.

“Betty,––by gosh! Betty,––little Betty, by Yiminy!” he exclaimed, throwing his long arms about her, knocking her grips aside and sending her hat awry. He lifted her up high and kissed her fair on the mouth. He swung her round and round the smithy, all oblivious of his amused spectators.

Meantime, Betty kicked and struggled, and finally succeeded in smacking his face loudly with a free hand.

Sol set her down and rubbed his cheek foolishly, white she stamped her foot at him.

“You great big––great big––boob!” she cried.

Jim stepped out from the shadow.

“Miss Jornsen,––allow me to introduce you to Mr. Sol Hanson!”

Betty looked at Jim querulously, and then at Sol who was standing nervously by, gazing at her.

Slowly and shyly she sidled up to the big blacksmith. She put her hands on the lapels of his ill-fitting coat and slid her fingers down them tenderly; then she laid her head on his chest, while his big arms went about her again.

“Come on, Phil!” said Jim, “this is no place for the proverbial parson’s son.”

Sol’s eyes took on a new light.

“Jim,––by gosh!––maybe it been no place for a parson’s son,” he grinned, “but it a dam-fine place for a parson. What you think, eh, Betty?”

“You fellows wait. We all go together, get it over right now. What you think, my little Betty?”

“Sure! There ain’t no good in waitin’,” answered Betty. “And say, Mister––Mister Langford!––I ain’t tryin’ to be insultin’, nor anything like that, but if you think you’re a better looker than my big Sol, then you’ve got another think comin’.”

Sol’s head went up and his chest went out, as they were entitled to do, for Jim was considered quite a handsome fellow in his own way.