Her Prairie Knight Part 5

"I hopes you get sicker so your stummit makes you hurt. You can't ride on my big, high pony."

"Get along with you and your high pony!" cried the exasperated Martha, threatening with a hairbrush. Dorman, his six shiny pennies held fast in his damp little fist, fled down the stairs and out into the sunlight.

d.i.c.k and Beatrice were just ready to ride away from the porch. "I want to go wis you, Uncle d.i.c.k." Dorman had followed the lead of Beatrice, his divinity; he refused to say Richard, though grandmama did object to nicknames.

"Up you go, son. You'll be a cow-puncher yourself one of these days.

I'll not let him fall, and this horse is gentle." This last to satisfy Dorman's aunt, who wavered between anxiety and relief.

"You may ride to the gate, Dorman, and then you'll have to hop down and run back to your auntie and grandma. We're going too far for you to-day." d.i.c.k gave him the reins to hold, and let the horse walk to prolong the joy of it.

Dorman held to the horn with one hand, to the reins with the other, and let his small body swing forward and back with the motion of the horse, in exaggerated imitation of his friend, Mr. Cameron. At the gate he allowed himself to be set down without protest, smiled importantly through the bars, and thrust his arm through as far as it would reach, that he might wave good-by. And his divinity smiled back at him, and threw him a kiss, which pleased him mightily.

"You must have hurt milord's feelings pretty bad," d.i.c.k remarked. "I couldn't get him to come. He had to write a letter first, he said."

"I wish, d.i.c.k," Beatrice answered, a bit petulantly, "you would stop calling him milord."

"Milord's a good name," d.i.c.k contended. "It's bad enough to 'Sir' him to his face; I can't do it behind his back, Trix. We're not used to fancy t.i.tles out here, and they don't fit the country, anyhow. I'm like you--I'd think a lot more of him if he was just a plain, everyday American, so I could get acquainted enough to call him 'Red Hayes.' I'd like him a whole lot better."

Beatrice was in no mood for an argument--on that subject, at least.

She let Rex out and raced over the prairie at a gait which would have greatly shocked her mother, who could not understand why Beatrice was not content to drive sedately about in the carriage with the rest of them.

When they reached the round-up Keith Cameron left the bunch and rode out to meet them, and d.i.c.k promptly shuffled responsibility for his sister's entertainment to the square shoulders of his neighbor.

"Trix wants to wise up on the cattle business, Keith. I'll just turn her over to you for a-while, and let you answer her questions; I can't, half the time. I want to look through the bunch a little."

Keith's face spoke grat.i.tude, and spoke it plainly. The face of Beatrice was frankly inattentive. She was watching the restless, moving ma.s.s of red backs and glistening horns, with hors.e.m.e.n weaving in and out among them in what looked to her a perfectly aimless fashion--until one would wheel and dart out into the open, always with a fleeing animal lumbering before. Other hors.e.m.e.n would meet him and take up the chase, and he would turn and ride leisurely back into the haze and confusion. It was like a kaleidoscope, for the scene shifted constantly and was never quite the same.

Keith, secure in her absorption, slid sidewise in the saddle and studied her face, knowing all the while that he was simply storing up trouble for himself. But it is not given a man to flee human nature, and the fellow who could sit calmly beside Beatrice and not stare at her if the opportunity offered must certainly have the blood of a fish in his veins. I will tell you why.

Beatrice was tall, and she was slim, and round, and tempting, with the most tantalizing curves ever built to torment a man. Her hair was soft and brown, and it waved up from the nape of her neck without those short, straggling locks and thin growth at the edge which mar so many feminine heads; and the sharp contrast of shimmery brown against ivory white was simply irresistible. Had her face been less full of charm, Keith might have been content to gaze and gaze at that lovely hair line.

As it was, his eyes wandered to her brows, also distinctly marked, as though outlined first with a pencil in the fingers of an artist who understood. And there were her lashes, dark and long, and curled up at the ends; and her cheek, with its changing, come-and-go coloring; her mouth, with its upper lip creased deeply in the middle--so deeply that a bit more would have been a defect--and with an odd little dimple at one corner; luckily, it was on the side toward him, so that he might look at it all he wanted to for once; for it was always there, only growing deeper and wickeder when she spoke or laughed. He could not see her eyes, for they were turned away, but he knew quite well the color; he had settled that point when he looked up from coiling his rope the day she came. They were big, baffling, blue-brown eyes, the like of which he had never seen before in his life--and he had thought he had seen every color and every shade under the sun. Thinking of them and their wonderful deeps and shadows, he got hungry for a sight of them. And suddenly she turned to ask a question, and found him staring at her, and surprised a look in his eyes he did not know was there.

For ten pulse-beats they stared, and the cheeks of Beatrice grew red as healthy young blood could paint them; Keith's were the same, only that his blood showed darkly through the tan. What question had been on her tongue she forgot to ask. Indeed, for the time, I think she forgot the whole English language, and every other--but the strange, wordless language of Keith's clear eyes.

And then it was gone, and Keith was looking away, and chewing a corner of his lip till it hurt. His horse backed restlessly from the tight-gripped rein, and Keith was guilty of kicking him with his spur, which did not better matters. Redcloud snorted and shook his outraged head, and Keith came to himself and eased the rein, and spoke remorseful, soothing words that somehow clung long in the memory of Beatrice.

Just after that d.i.c.k galloped up, his elbows flapping like the wings of a frightened hen.

"Well, I suppose you could run a cow outfit all by yourself, with the knowledge you've got from Keith," he greeted, and two people became even more embarra.s.sed than before. If d.i.c.k noticed anything, he must have been a wise young man, for he gave no sign.

But Beatrice had not queened it in her set, three seasons, for nothing, even if she was capable of being confused by a sweet, new language in a man's eyes. She answered d.i.c.k quietly.

"I've been so busy watching it all that I haven't had time to ask many questions, as Mr. Cameron can testify. It's like a game, and it's very fascinating--and dusty. I wonder if I might ride in among them, d.i.c.k?"

"Better not, sis. It isn't as much fun as it looks, and you can see more out here. There comes milord; he must have changed his mind about the letter."

Beatrice did not look around. To see her, you would swear she had set herself the task of making an accurate count of noses in that seething ma.s.s of raw beef below her. After a minute she ventured to glance furtively at Keith, and, finding his eyes turned her way, blushed again and called herself an idiot. After that, she straightened in the saddle, and became the self-poised Miss Lansell, of New York.

Keith rode away to the far side of the herd, out of temptation; queer a man never runs from a woman until it is too late to be a particle of use. Keith simply changed his point of view, and watched his Heart's Desire from afar.

CHAPTER 5. The Search for Dorman.

"Oh, I say," began Sir Redmond, an hour after, when he happened to stand close to Beatrice for a few minutes, "where is Dorman? I fancied you brought him along."

"We didn't," Beatrice told him. "He only rode as far as the gate, where d.i.c.k left him, and started him back to the house."

"Mary told me he came along. She and your mother were congratulating each other upon a quiet half-day, with you and Dorman off the place together. I'll wager their felicitations fell rather flat."

Beatrice laughed. "Very likely. I know they were mourning because their lace-making had been neglected lately. What with that trip to Lost Canyon to-morrow, and to the mountains Friday, I'm afraid the lace will continue to suffer. What do you think of a round-up, Sir Redmond?"

"It's deuced nasty," said he. "Such a lot of dust and noise. I fancy the workmen don't find it pleasant."

"Yes, they do; they like it," she declared. "d.i.c.k says a cowboy is never satisfied off the range. And you mustn't call them workmen, Sir Redmond.

They'd resent it, if they knew. They're cowboys, and proud of it. They seem rather a pleasant lot of fellows, on the whole. I have been talking to one or two."

"Well, we're all through here," d.i.c.k announced, riding up. "I'm going to ride around by Keith's place, to see a horse I'm thinking of buying.

Want to go along, Trix? Or are you tired?"

"I'm never tired," averred his sister, readjusting a hat-pin and gathering up her reins. "I always want to go everywhere that you'll take me, d.i.c.k. Consider that point settled for the summer. Are you coming, Sir Redmond?"

"I think not, thank you," he said, not quite risen above his rebuff of the morning. "I told Mary I would be back for lunch."

"I was wiser; I refused even to venture an opinion as to when I should be back. Well, 'so-long'!"

"You're learning the lingo pretty fast, Trix," d.i.c.k chuckled, when they were well away from Sir Redmond. "Milord almost fell out of the saddle when you fired that at him. Where did you pick it up?"

"I've heard you say it a dozen times since I came. And I don't care if he is shocked--I wanted him to be. He needn't be such a perfect bear; and I know mama and Miss Hayes don't expect him to lunch, without us. He just did it to be spiteful."

"Jerusalem, Trix! A little while ago you said he was a dear! You shouldn't snub him, if you want him to be nice to you."

"I don't want him to be nice," flared Beatrice. "I don't care how he acts. Only, I must say, ill humor doesn't become him. Not that it matters, however."

"Well, I guess we can get along without him, if he won't honor us with his company. Here comes Keith. Brace up, sis, and be pleasant."

Beatrice glanced casually at the galloping figure of d.i.c.k's neighbor, and frowned.

"You mustn't flirt with Keith," d.i.c.k admonished gravely. "He's a good fellow, and as square a man as I know; but you ought to know he's got the reputation of being a hard man to know. Lots of girls have tried to flirt and make a fool of him, and wound up with their feelings hurt worse than his were."

"Is that a dare?" Beatrice threw up her chin with a motion d.i.c.k knew of old.

"Not on your life! You better leave him alone; one or the other of you would get the worst of it, and I'd hate to see either of you feeling bad. As I said before, he's a bad man to fool with."

"I don't consider him particularly dangerous--or interesting. He's not half as nice as Sir Redmond." Beatrice spoke as though she meant what she said, and d.i.c.k had no chance to argue the point, for Keith pulled up beside them at that moment.

Beatrice seemed inclined to silence, and paid more attention to the landscape than she did to the conversation, which was mostly about range conditions, and the scanty water supply, and the drought.