FullReads

To his unbounded surprise, Miss Satterly calmly sat down upon the doorstep. Weary promptly slid out of the saddle and sat down beside her, thankful that the step was not a wide one. “You’ve been unmercifully hard to locate since the dance,” he complained. “I like to lost my job, chasing over this way, when I was supposed to be headed another direction. I came by here last night at five minutes after four, and you weren’t in sight anywhere; was yesterday a holiday?”

“You probably didn’t look in the window,” said the schoolma’am. “I was writing letters here till after five.”

“With the door shut and locked?”

“The wind blew so,” explained Miss Satterly, lamely. “And that lock–“

“First I knew of the wind blowing yesterday. It was as hot as the hubs uh he–as blue blazes when I came by. There weren’t any windows up, even–I hope you was real comfortable.”

“Perfectly,” she assured him.

“I’ll gamble yuh were! Well, and where were yuh cached last Sunday?”

“Nowhere. I went with Bert and Miss Forsyth up in the mountains. We took our lunch and had a perfectly lovely time.”

“I’m glad somebody had a good time. I got away at nine o’clock and came over to Meeker’s–and you weren’t there; so I rode the rim-rocks till sundown, trying to locate yuh. It’s easier hunting strays in the Bad Lands.”

Miss Satterly seemed about to speak, but she changed her mind and gazed at the coulee-rim.

“It’s hard to get away, these days,” Weary went on explaining. “I wanted to come before the dance, but we were gathering some stuff out the other way, and I couldn’t. The Old Man is shipping, yuh see; we’re holding a bunch right now, waiting for cars. I got Happy Jack to stand herd in my place, is how I got here.”

The schoolma’am yawned apologetically into her palm. Evidently she was not greatly interested in the comings and goings of Weary Davidson.

“How did yuh like the dance?” he asked, coming to the subject that he knew was the vital point.

“Lovely,” said the schoolma’am briefly, but with fervor.

“Different here,” asserted Weary. “I drifted, right before supper.”

“Did you?” Miss Satterly accented the first word in a way she taught her pupils indicated surprise. “I don’t reckon you noticed it. You were pretty busy, about then.”

Miss Satterly laughed languid assent.

“I never knew before that Bert Rogers was any relation of Myrt Forsyth,” observed Weary, edging still nearer the vital point. “They sure aren’t much alike.”

“You used to know her?” asked Miss Satterly, politely.

“Well, I should say yes. I used to go to school with Myrt. How do you like her?”

“Lovely,” said Miss Satterly, this time without fervor.

Weary began digging a trench with his spurs. He wished the schoolma’am would not limit herself so rigidly to that one adjective. It became unmeaning with much use, so that it left a fellow completely in the dark.

“Just about everybody says that about her–at first,” he remarked.

“Did you?” she asked him, still politely.

“I did a heap worse than that,” said Weary, grimly determined. “I had a bad case of calf-love and made a fool uh myself generally.”

“What fun!” chirped the schoolma’am with an unconvincing little laugh.

“Not for me, it wasn’t. Whilst I had it I used to pack a lock uh that red hair in my breast pocket and heave sighs over it that near lifted me out uh my boots. Oh, I was sure earnest! But she did me the biggest favor she could; a slick-haired piano-tuner come to town and she turned me down for him. I was plumb certain my heart was busted wide open, at the time, though.” Weary laughed reminiscently.

“She said–I think you misunderstood her. She appears to–” Miss Satterly, though she felt that she was being very generous, did not quite know how to finish.