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“Don’t get off,” she commanded. “I can mount alone–and you’ll have to carry the box. It’s going to be awkward, but you would have me go.”

Weary took the box and prudently remained in the saddle. Glory, having the man he did for master, was unused to the flutter of women’s skirts so close, and rolled his eyes till the whites showed all round. Moreover, he was not satisfied with that big, white thing in Weary’s arms.

He stood quite still, however, until the schoolma’am was settled to her liking in the saddle, and had tucked her skirt down over the toe of her right foot. He watched the proceeding with much interest–as did Weary–and then walked sedately from the yard, through the pebbly creek and up the slope beyond. He heard Weary give a sigh of relief at his docility, and straightway thrust his nose between his white front feet, and proceeded to carry out certain little plans of his own. Weary, taken by surprise and encumbered by the box, could not argue the point; he could only, in range parlance, “hang and rattle.”

“Oh,” cried Miss Satterly, “if he’s going to act like that, give me the box.”

Weary would like to have done so, but already he was half way to the gate, and his coat was standing straight out behind to prove the speed of his flight. He could not even look back. He just hung tight to the box and rode.

The little gray was no racer, but his wind was good; and with urging he kept the fleeing Glory in sight for a mile or so. Then, horse and rider were briefly silhouetted against the sunset as they topped a distant hill, and after that the schoolma’am rode by faith.

At the gate which led into the big Flying U field she overtook them. Glory, placid as a sheep, was nibbling a frayed end of the rope which held the gate shut, and Weary, the big box balanced in front of him across the saddle, was smoking a cigarette.

“Well,” greeted Miss Satterly breathlessly, and rather tartly, “only for you having my dress, I’d have gone straight back home. Do brothers always act like this?”

“Search me,” said Weary, shaking his head. “Anyway, yuh better talk to Glory about it. He appears to be running this show. When I rode out to your place, I didn’t have any bit in his mouth at all. Coming back, I’ve got one of Joe Meeker’s teething rings, that wouldn’t hold a pet turkey. But we’re going to the dance, Miss Satterly. Don’t you worry none about that.”

Miss Satterly laughed and rode ahead of them. “I’m going,” she announced firmly. “It’s leap year, and I think I can rustle a partner if you decide to sit and look through that gate all night.”

“You’ll need your pretty dress. Glory ain’t much used to escorting young ladies, but he’s a gentleman; we’re coming, all right.”

It was strange, perhaps, that Glory should miss the chance of proving his master a liar, but he nevertheless ambled decorously to Dry Lake and did nothing more unseemly than nipping occasionally at the neck of the little gray.

That is how Weary learned that large, brown eyes do not look sidelong at a man after the manner of long, heavy-lidded blue ones; and that, also, is how he came to throw up his head and deny to himself and his world that he ever was shy of women.

PART TWO

Weary rode stealthily around the corner of the little, frame school-house and was not disappointed. The schoolma’am was sitting unconventionally upon the doorstep, her shoulder turned to him and her face turned to the trail by which a man naturally would be supposed to approach the place. Her hair was shining darkly in the sun and the shorter locks were blowing about her face in a downright tantalizing fashion; they made a man want to brush them back and kiss the spot they were caressing so wantonly. She was humming a tune softly to herself. Weary caught the words, sung absently, under her breath: