"Careless child," observed Bill Wingo, coming up on the porch where
Sally Jane lay in the hammock. "You dropped your hat in the draw. I
found it this morning. Here it is. Don't move, sweet one. Of course,
if you asked me to sit down or didn't ask me I would, and if you felt
like rustling some coffee and cake, or lemonade and doughnuts, or even
just a piece of pie with a bite of cheese on the side--just a bite, not
over half a pound, I don't like cheese much--I wouldn't stop you."
"Stop calling me 'sweet one,'" Miss Prescott said crossly. "I'm not
your sweet one, or anybody else's sweet one, and I'll get you something
to fill your fat stomach, you lazy loafer, when I get good and ready.
Not before."
"Well, all right," he murmured resignedly, settling down on the stout
pine rail of the porch and fanning himself with his hat. "But I love
you just the same. What's that? Did I hear you curse or something?"
"Something. I only said damn because you make me sick. Love, love,
love, morning, noon and night! Don't men ever think of anything else?"
"Not when you're around," he told her.
"Oh, it's the very devil," admitted Sally Jane, rubbing her red mouth
with a reflective forefinger. "Am I so alluring?"
"Who has been kissing you now?" he asked idly and wondered why her face
should flame at the word. Wondered--because everybody knew Sally Jane.
On her part she wondered if he had seen what had passed in the draw the
day before, then decided instantly that he had not, else his manner
toward her would have been decidedly different.
"You haven't answered my question?" he persisted, still idly.
"Does it need one?"
"Well, no, not yet, anyway. When you're engaged to me, I'll know who's
kissing you."
"Don't be disgusting."
"No disgusting about it. I'll probably hug you, too."
"What dismal beasts men are," she said, with a mock shiver, having
regained control of her jumpy nerves. "I suppose you'd enjoy having me
sit on your knee."
"I would indeed," he told her warmly. "I think that chair there would
hold the two of us if we sat quiet--fairly quiet."
It was at this juncture that her father, Sam Prescott, came out on the
porch.
"Howdy, young Bill," said Sam. He invariably prefixed the adjective to
Bill's name. Why, no one knew. It was doubtful if he knew himself.
"'Lo, Sam," said young Bill.
"Sam," said Sally Jane from the hammock, "s'pose now a man tried to hug
you, and kiss you and make you sit on his knee, what would you do?"
"If I was you, you mean?" inquired Sam judicially. Middle-aged though
he was, he never ceased to experience a pleasurable thrill when his
daughter called him "Sam." It reminded him so much of her mother. "If
I was you," he went on, without waiting for an answer, "and the feller
which tried to make me do all those things was young Bill here, I'd do
'em. I really believe he likes you, Sally Jane."
"You think so, do you?" sighed Sally Jane, smoothing her frock down
over her ankles. "You too, Samuel? What chance has a poor girl
got--without a club?"
"I told her if she married me," spoke up Bill, "she could have jam on
Sundays and butter the rest of the week."
"There, you see, Sally Jane!" said Sam Prescott. "He'll be good and
generous. And if you asked him for a new dress now and then, or a pair
of shoes, I'll bet he wouldn't say no."
Sally Jane stubbornly shook her copper-colored head of hair. "Samuel,"
said she, "you're the only man I ever loved. Bill's all right in his
futile, thumb-handed way, but he's not my Sam. Now don't forget that
one drink is enough for a plumpish man with a beautiful daughter, and
that I want you to bring back a dozen cans of baking-powder, a dozen
bars of May Rose soap, three dozen boxes of matches, four sacks of
flour, sack of salt, sixty pounds of sugar, two papers of pins, four
spools of number forty cotton and a pail of chocolate creams. Be sure
and take the cover off and see it's a full pail, and if Nate tries to
palm off any stale stuff or hard candy on you, why just throw it in his
face and tell him I'll come in and complain in person my next trip."
"My Lord, Sally Jane," Sam exclaimed helplessly, "I can't remember all
that!"
"I know you can't," said Sally Jane calmly. "I've merely been
impressing it on you that there's a lot of errands for you to do.
You'll find a carefully written list of everything I want stuck in the
coil of the tie-rope under the seat of the buck-board. You can't miss
it when you go to tie the team."
"And Sam," she added, raising her voice to a shout, for her father had
already departed corralward, "be back by seven. I'm gonna make a lemon
pie."
Her father waved a comprehending hand and disappeared behind the
blacksmith shop.
"You see," said Billy Wingo, with a smirk of self-satisfaction, "the
male parent approves. The last obstacle is removed. Be a sport. Take
a chance. You might go farther and fare worse."
"I doubt it, William. Not that you aren't a nice boy and all that sort
of thing. However, tell sister why you seek her company this morning?"
"Oh, yes, of course, sister not being a good excuse for coming, I did
another reason. I have a fresh bale of news for her li'l pink ear.
Last night I was approached--" He paused dramatically.
"How much did he try to borrow?" Sally Jane inquired indifferently.
"Nothing like that, sweet one. The political steersmen of our fair
county rode out to my place last night and----"
"What did the old thief want?" Sally Jane brutally wished to know.
"_Steersmen_, beloved. There were two of him, and you do both old
gentlemen an injustice. They----"
"So Tip came with Rafe, did he? And you mean to tell me you didn't
even miss your watch after they'd gone? You didn't? They must be
sick, the pair of them. What did they do?"
"Offered me the nomination for sheriff!"
Sally Jane sat up abruptly, stuck her finger in her mouth, then held it
up to catch the vagrant breeze.
"The wind's still in the west," she said, making her eyes round as
saucers. "And you are still sitting there as large as life, and I'm
here alive and in my right mind!" Here she pinched her forearm. "That
hurt," she added. "I really am not dreaming. They want you for
sheriff, huh?"
"Don't 'huh' at me, Sally Jane. It ain't being done by the best people
no more. And they want me for sheriff, really."
"I wonder just how much of that really is real?"
He wrinkled his forehead at her. "Sometimes, Sally Jane, you talk most
awful puzzling."
"Those two old rascals!" she cried.
"Don't you think their intentions are honorable?"
Sally Jane's laughter was sardonic.
"Are they trying to fool me, or what?" he persisted.
"I don't know whether they're trying to fool you or not," was the
reply, "but they're trying to fool somebody, that's a cinch."
"Do you know now, Sally Jane, I was thinking something like that
myself."
She looked at him with a gleam of respect in her eyes. "I wonder if
you really have a brain after all, William. Occasionally you give out
a spark that leads one to believe that there may be a trace of
reasoning power underneath your waving hair. What makes you think they
have an ulterior motive?"
"Humanly speaking, I dunno why; but I do."
"Instinct is the white woman's burden, boy. You'd better leave it
alone. But it doesn't take any instinct to tell me that there's a man
and brother hiding in the cord-wood. To find the dark-hued
gentleman--that is the question."
"Why take the trouble?"
"Why? Listen to the man! Why? So you'll know what you're up against,
that's why."
"But I'm not up against anything," he objected mildly. "I told 'em I
didn't want the job."
"What?"
He rubbed an outraged ear. "No need to deafen me," said he.
"Deafen you?" she cried. "I could take a club to you, you fat-head!
The opportunity of a lifetime and you turn it down! Oh! I could
shriek my head off with rage! I never was so hopping in my life! The
first time an honest man is offered a political job in this county, for
the honest man to turn up his nose, is----" Words failed her. She
almost choked.
"So-o, so-o," he soothed. "Don't get so excited. Remember we are
young but once, and every outburst brings us nearer the grave. I
hadn't reached the end of my tale when you blew up and hit the ceiling.
Lemme finish, that's a good child. I told 'em I didn't want the job,
but they wouldn't take 'no' for an answer. They said for me to think
it over, and they'd be back in a couple of days and take it up with me
again."
"Bill," said Sally Jane, leaning forward, her violet eyes shining, "I'm
serious."
"I'll try to believe it," he said, regarding her with admiration. "But
just this minute you look like the most unserious thing I ever saw--and
the most beautiful. Listen, Sally Jane, I wish you'd do as I ask you.
Close your eyes and plunge right in. We'd be as happy as two pups in a
basket. Sign on the dotted line and leave the rest to me."
Which nonsense she quite properly disregarded utterly. "Bill, I want
you to take that nomination."
"But why, Sally Jane? I don't wanna be sheriff."
"Suppose I want you to?"
"But why should you want me to?"
"Isn't it enough that I ask it?"
"You flirt! You're utterly shameless! You know you can twist me all
round your li'l pink finger like a piece of string. You know I'm fool
enough to do anything you ask, and----"
"Well then, good fool," she smiled her interruption, "it's all settled.
You accept the nomination, and if you don't make things hum after
you're elected, you're not the man I take you for."
Bill slipped right off the porch rail and sat down limply on the floor.
His eye-balls rolled up. His hand fluttered over his heart. He
breathed with difficulty. "At last," he muttered. "Accepted! The
shock will be the death of me! Water! Water! With a little whisky
stirred in. Just a little. Not more than four or five fingers, or
perhaps six. No sugar."
He got to his feet slowly and reseated himself on the rail. "You won't
go back on your word, Sally Jane," he told her soberly.
"I can do lots of things you never heard of," said she. "But making
two meanings grow where only one grew before is not one of them."
"Joking aside," he said, "will you marry me if I take this sheriff job?"
"Joking aside," said she, "would you want me for a reason like that?"
"Well, no," he admitted frankly. "I'd want you to love me a lot."
"I'd make a pretty worthless wife otherwise. Honestly, Bill, I like
you a great deal, but there's something lacking. And when there's
something lacking, there's nothing to be done. Love is the greatest
thing in the world, Bill. It's what makes life worth living. And you
mustn't cheat it. If you do, you might better never have been born."
He nodded. Try as he might, he was unable to feel very badly. He
decided to give it up as a hopeless job.
"I see," he said gravely. "Sometimes, Sally Jane, I get an idea that
maybe you and me won't marry each other, after all. But no matter what
happens, I'll always be a brother to you. You can count on me."
He arose and made her a flourishing bow.
"That," said Sally Jane, with her bright smile, "takes a load off my
heart. As a sister, I know I'd fill every requirement. Be a good
brother now, and do as I ask. Be a sheriff."
"All right," said Billy Wingo. "I will."