"Now there," said Riley Tyler, staring at the driver of a buckboard who
was tying her team in front of the Rocky Mountain store, "now there is
a girl that is pretty as a li'l red wagon, new-painted."
Billy Wingo, unmoved, continued to whittle the end of the packing case
he was sharing with Tyler. He did not even look at the girl, and she
was a very handsome girl.
"Yeah," said Billy Wingo.
"Not that I cotton to a female girl as a usual thing," resumed Riley,
"ever since a experience I had when young. I'll tell you about it some
time; maybe I better now."
"No, not now," Billy made haste to say; for he had heard the story of
every single one of Tyler's love affairs at least a dozen times. "Le's
talk about somethin' pleasant. Try the weather."
"You know, just for that," trundled on Riley Tyler, "we'll go on
talking about young Hazel Walton over there. Pity she's gone in the
store. You've never taken a good look at her, have you?"
"Nor I don't want to," denied Billy with what seemed to Riley an
unnecessary heat.
"Why not? Do your eyes good. Tell you, Bill, she's got the
best-looking black hair y'ever saw."
"I saw her once or twice with her uncle," Billy admitted desperately.
"She's all you say she is and more too. Anything to please the
children. Don't you ever stop talkin', Riley?"
"Not when I got somethin' like Hazel to talk about," declared the
relentless Riley, warming to his subject. "Y'oughta notice her eyes
once, Bill. Tell you, you never saw _eyes_ till you see hers. They're
eyes, they are! Big and black and soft and eyewinkers long as a
pony's. Fact. And she ain't lost a tooth. She's still got the whole
thirty-four. You take my word for it, Bill, she's a whole lot
different from other folks."
"She's two teeth different anyway. Most generally all other folks can
crowd in their mouth are thirty-two."
"What's a tooth more or less between friends?" said the unabashed
Riley. "She's got a whole mouthful, and when she smiles she shows 'em
all."
"That's great," yawned Billy, closing his pocket-knife with a click.
"You forgot to say whether she's a good cook or not."
"She's a number one cook," Riley told him seriously. "Her coffee is
coffee, lemme tell you, and she don't fry a steak to boot-leather
neither. Not her. No. She broils it, she does. _Y'oughta_ taste her
mashed potatoes. No lumps in 'em or grit or nothin', only the mealy
old potato; and butter beets! My Gawd!"
"Mixes 'em up with the potato, huh?"
"Of course not, you jack--separate. And canned peas--separate.
Actually she cooks those peas so they're tender as fresh ones;
tenderer, by gummy! Makes her own butter, too, in a churn."
"Well, well, in a churn. I never knew they made butter thataway."
"Shut up, Bill. You ain't got any soul. I stop at Walton's for a meal
every chance I get. Y'oughta see her cookin' a meal, Bill. She rolls
her sleeves up and she's got dimples in her elbows. She's a picture,
and you can stick a pin in that."
"Why don't you marry the girl?"
"I've asked her," was the reply made without rancor. "She said, 'No
thanks.'"
"That's one thing in her favor."
"Yeah, I think--Hey! what you tryin' to do, insult me?"
"Insult you, you tarrapin? You wouldn't know it if I did."
"If I wasn't so comfortable, I'd show you something," declared Riley
Tyler, sliding farther down on the small of his long back. "But the
heat has saved your life, William. Yeah, otherwise you'd be a corpse
all bluggy in the middle of Main Street. I'm a wild wolf when I'm
riled, you can gamble-- Yonder she comes. She didn't stay long."
Billy dug the Tyler shortribs with a hard elbow. "Where's your
manners? Go over and untie the lady's team."
"Too far. She'd have 'em untied by the time I got there. Besides, I'm
too comfortable. Another thing, I'd have to get up. No, no, I'll stay
here."
Hazel Walton stepped into the buckboard, kicked the brake-lever and
swung her team like a workman. The tall near mule laid back his long
ears and planted both hind feet on the dashboard. _Smack! Smack!_
went the whip. The mule tucked his tail, shook his mean head and tried
to jump through his collar. The brake-lever shot forward under the
shove of the girl's straightened right leg. The sensible off mule
threw his head to the left to ease the hard drag on his mouth as the
girl swayed back on the near rein. The near mule, hearing the slither
of the locked wheels behind him, and with his windpipe bent like a bow
and his chin forced back to his chest, decided that fighting would
avail him nothing and quieted at once.
"Regular driver, that girl," Billy said approvingly. "It ain't every
woman can drive a pair of those big freight mules. I never knew she
was like that."
"Lots of things you dunno," Riley hastened to say. "You didn't even
know she was pretty."
Billy hopped across the sidewalk and ran out into the middle of Main
Street. The mules, hard held, slid to a halt. Billy scooped up the
package that had fallen from behind the seat and hurried up to the
buckboard.
"Your tarp's slipped a little, ma'am," said he, stowing away the
package without raising his eyes to Miss Walton, who was leaning over
the back of the seat. "I'll tie it fast."
Not till the tarpaulin was fastened to his complete satisfaction did he
look up. Then he realized that Riley Tyler had not told half the truth
about Hazel Walton's eyes. True, they were big and black and soft, but
they were deep too, deep as cool rock pools, and they looked at you
steadily with a straight look that somehow made you wish that you had
been a better boy.
Queer that he hadn't noticed this attribute before. But at none of the
two or three times he had passed the girl on Golden Bar's Main Street
had she impressed him in the least. He could not have described her to
save his life. Perhaps it was because he had not looked into her eyes
before to-day. But he wasted no time thinking about that. He kept
right on looking into her eyes.
"You don't come in town very often," was his sufficiently inane
observation.
"Not very often," said she, and smiled.
Yes, there were the teeth. And weren't they white! He didn't know
when he had seen such white teeth. And her mouth had a dimple near one
corner. Now the dimple was gone. He wished it would appear once more.
"Do it again," he found himself saying like a fool.