AT THE BON AMI
Unlike most of those who ride much, her escort was a fast walker. Louise
had trouble in keeping up with him, though she had always considered
herself a good pedestrian. But Jim Munson was laboring under strange
embarrassment. He was red-facedly conscious of the attention he was
attracting striding up the inclined street from the station in the van
of the prettiest and most thoroughbred girl who had struck Velpen this
long time.
Not that he objected to attention under normal conditions. Not he! He
courted it. His chief aim in life seemed to be to throw the limelight of
publicity, first, on the Three Bars ranch, as the one and only in the
category of ranches, and to be connected with it in some way, however
slight, the unquestioned aim and object of existence of every man,
woman, and child in the cattle country; secondly, on Paul Langford, the
very boss of bosses, whose master mind was the prop and stay of the
Northwest, if not of all Christendom; and lastly upon himself, the
modest, but loyal servitor in this Paradise on earth. But girls were far
from normal conditions. There were no women at the Three Bars. There
never had been any woman at the Three Bars within the memory of man. To
be sure, Williston’s little girl had sometimes ridden over on an errand,
but she didn’t count. This—this was the real thing, and he didn’t know
just how to deal with it. He needed time to enlarge his sight to this
broadened horizon.
He glanced with nonchalance over his shoulder. After all, she was only a
girl, and not such a big one either. She wore longer skirts than
Williston’s girl, but he didn’t believe she was a day older. He squared
about immediately, and what he had meant to say he never said, on
account of an unaccountable thickening of his tongue.
Presently, he bolted into a building, which proved to be the Bon Ami, a
restaurant under the direct supervision of the fat, voluble, and tragic
Mrs. Higgins, where the men from the other side of the river had right
of way and unlimited credit.
“What’ll you have?” he asked, hospitably, the familiar air of the Bon
Ami bringing him back to his accustomed self-confident swagger.
“Might I have some tea and toast, please?” said Louise, sinking into a
chair at the nearest table, with two startling yet amusing thoughts
rampant in her brain. One was, that she wished Aunt Helen could have
seen her swinging along in the wake of this typical “bold and
licentious” man, and calmly and comfortably sitting down to a cosy
little supper for two at a public eating house; the other startling
thought was to the effect that the invitation was redolent with
suggestiveness, and she wondered if she was not expected to say, “A
whiskey for me, please.”
“Guess you kin,” answered Jim, wonder in his voice at the exceeding
barrenness of the order. “Mrs. Higgins, hello there, Mrs. Higgins! I
say, there, bring on some tea and toast for the lady!”
“Where is the Three Bars?” asked Louise, her thoughts straying to the
terrors of a fifteen-mile drive through a strange and uncanny country
with a stranger and yet more uncanny man. She had accepted him without
question. He was part and parcel with the strangeness of her new
position. But the suddenness of the transition from idle conjecture to
startling reality had raised her proud head and she looked this new
development squarely in the face without outward hint of inward
perturbation.
“Say, where was you raised?” asked Jim, with tolerant scorn, between
huge mouthfuls of boiled pork and cabbage, interspersed with baked
potatoes, hot rolls, and soggy dumplings, shovelled in with knife, fork,
or spoon. He occasionally anticipated dessert by making a sudden sortie
into the quarter of an immense custard pie, hastening the end by means
of noisy draughts of steaming coffee. Truly, the Three Bars connection
had the fat of the land at the Bon Ami.
“Why, it’s the Three Bars that’s bringin’ you here. Didn’t you know
that? There’s nary a man in the hull country with backbone enough to
keep him off all-fours ’ceptin’ Paul Langford. Um. You just try once to
walk over the Boss, will you? Lord! What a grease spot you’d make!”
“Mr. Gordon isn’t being walked over, is he?” asked Louise, finished with
her tea and toast and impatient to be off.
“Oh, Gordon? Pretty decent sort o’ chap. Right idees. Don’t know much
about handlin’ hoss thieves and sich. Ain’t smooth enough. Acted kind o’
like a chicken with its head cut off till the Boss got into the
roundup.”
“Oh!” said Louise, whose conception of the young counsel for the State
did not tally with this delineation.
“Yep, Miss, this here’s the Boss’s doin’s. Yep. Lord! What’ll that gang
look like when we are through with ’em? Spendin’ the rest o’ their days
down there in Sioux Falls, meditatin’ on the advisability o’ walkin’
clear o’ the toes o’ the Three Bars in the future and cussin’ their
stupendified stupidity in foolin’ even once with the Three Bars. Yep,
sir—yep, ma’am, I mean,—Jesse Black and his gang have acted just like
pesky, little plum’-fool moskeeters, and we’re goin’ to slap ’em. The
cheek of ’em, lightin’ on the Three Bars! Lord!”
“Mr. Williston informed, did he not?”
“Williston? Oh, yes, he informed, but he’d never ’a’ done it if it
hadn’t ’a’ been for the Boss. The ol’ jellyfish wouldn’t ’a’ had the
nerve to inform without backin’, as sure as a stone wall. The Boss is a
doin’ this, I tell you, Miss. But Williston’s a goin’ on the stand
to-morrer all right, and so am I.”
The two cowboys at the corner table had long since finished their
supper. They now lighted bad-smelling cigars and left the room. To
Louise’s great relief, Munson rose, too. He was back very soon with a
neat little runabout and a high-spirited team of bays.
“Boss’s private,” explained Jim with pride. “Nothin’ too good for a
lady, so the Boss sent this and me to take keer o’ it. And o’ you, too,
Miss,” he added, as an afterthought.
He held the lines in his brown, muscular hands, lovingly, while he
stowed away Louise’s belongings and himself snugly in the seat, and then
the blood burned hot and stinging through his bronzed, tough skin, for
suddenly in his big, honest, untrained sensibilities was born the
consciousness that the Boss would have stowed away the lady first. It
was an embarrassing moment. Louise saved the day by climbing in
unconcernedly after him and tucking the linen robe over her skirt.
“It will be a dusty drive, won’t it?” she asked, simply.
“Miss, you’re a—dandy,” said Jim as simply.
As they drove upon the pontoon bridge, Louise looked back at the little
town on the bluffs, and felt a momentary choking in her throat. It was a
strange place, yet it had tendrils reaching homeward. The trail beyond
was obscurely marked and not easy to discern. She turned to her
companion and asked quickly: “Why didn’t Mary come?”
“Great guns! Did I forgit to tell you? Williston’s got the stomach-ache
to beat the band and Mary’s got to physic him up ’gin to-morrer. We’ve
got to git him on that stand if it takes the hull Three Bars to hol’ him
up and the gal a pourin’ physic down him between times. Yep, Ma’am. He
was pizened. You see, everybody that ate any meat last night was took
sick with gripin’ cramps, yep; but Williston he was worse’n all, he
bein’ a hearty eater. He was a stayin’ in town over night on this
preliminary business, and Dick Gordon he was took, too, but not so bad,
bein’ what you might call a light eater. The Boss and me we drove home
after all, though we’d expected to stay for supper. The pesky coyotes
got fooled that time. Yep, Ma’am, no doubt about it in the world.
Friends o’ Jesse’s that we ain’t able to lay hands on yit pizened that
there meat. Yep, no doubt about it. Dick was in an awful sweat about
you. Was bound he was a comin’ after you hisself, sick as he was, when
we found Mary was off the count. So then the Boss was a comin’ and they
fit and squabbled for an hour who could be best spared, when I, comin’
in, settled it in a jiffy by offerin’ my services, which was gladly
accepted. When there’s pizenin’ goin’ on, why, the Boss’s place is hum.
And nothin’ would do but the Boss’s own particular outfit. He never does
things by halves, the Boss don’t. So I hikes home after it and then
hikes here.”
“I am very grateful to him, I am sure,” murmured Louise, smiling.
And Jim, daring to look upon her smiling face, clear eyes, and soft hair
under the jaunty French sailor hat, found himself wondering why there
was no woman at the Three Bars. With the swift, half-intuitive thought,
the serpent entered Eden.