_Her Little Joke_
A brief ten minutes of waiting beside the front door of the house, and
then Ronicky Doone heard a swift pattering of feet on the stairs.
Presently the girl was moving very slowly toward him down the hall.
Plainly she was bitterly afraid when she came beside him, under the dim
hall light. She wore that same black hat, turned back from her white
face, and the red flower beside it was a dull, uncertain blur. Decidedly
she was pretty enough to explain Bill Gregg's sorrow.
Ronicky gave her no chance to think twice. She was in the very act of
murmuring something about a change of mind, when he opened the door and,
stepping out into the starlight, invited her with a smile and a gesture
to follow. In a moment they were in the freshness of the night air. He
took her arm, and they passed slowly down the steps. At the bottom she
turned and looked anxiously at the house.
"Lady," murmured Ronicky, "they's nothing to be afraid of. We're going
to walk right up and down this street and never get out of sight of the
friends you got in this here house."
At the word "friends" she shivered slightly, and he added: "Unless you
want to go farther of your own free will."
"No, no!" she exclaimed, as if frightened by the very prospect.
"Then we won't. It's all up to you. You're the boss, and I'm the
cow-puncher, lady."
"But tell me quickly," she urged. "I--I have to go back. I mustn't stay
out too long."
"Starting right in at the first," Ronicky said, "I got to tell you that
Bill has told me pretty much everything that ever went on between you
two. All about the correspondence-school work and about the letters and
about the pictures."
"I don't understand," murmured the girl faintly.
But Ronicky diplomatically raised his voice and went on, as if he had
not heard her. "You know what he's done with that picture of yours?"
"No," she said faintly.
"He got the biggest nugget that he's ever taken out of the dirt. He got
it beaten out into the right shape, and then he made a locket out of it
and put your picture in it, and now he wears it around his neck, even
when he's working at the mine."