Ruth Fielding at Silver Ranch Part 25

"You hop in with me, Sally," urged Ike, blushing very red. "I'm goin' to Bullhide."

"Go joy-ridin' with _you_, Mr. Stedman?" responded the schoolma'am. "I don't know about that. Are you to be trusted with that automobile?"

"I tell yuh I got it gentled," declared Ike. "And I got to be moving on mighty quick." He told Sally why in a few words and immediately the young lady was interested.

"That Ruth Fielding! Isn't she a plucky one for a Down East girl? But she's too young to nurse that sick man. And she'll catch the fever herself like enough."

"Hope not," grunted Ike. "That would be an awful misfortune. She's the nicest little thing that ever grazed on _this_ range-yuh hear me!"

"Well," said Sally, briskly. "I got to go to town and I might as well take my life in my hands and go with you, Ike," and she swung herself into the seat beside him.

Ike started the machine again. He was delighted. Never before had Sally d.i.c.kson allowed him to be alone with her more than a scant few moments at a time. Ike began to swallow hard, the perspiration stood on his brow and he grew actually pale around the mouth. It seemed to him as though everything inside of him rose up in his throat. As he told about it long afterward, if somebody had shot him through the body just then it would only have made a flesh-wound!

"Sally!" he gasped, before her father's store and the schoolhouse were out of sight.

"Why, Ike! what's the matter with you? Are you sick?"

"N-no! I ain't sick," mumbled the bashful one.

"You're surely not scared?" demanded Sally. "There hasn't anything happened wrong to this automobile?"

"No, ma'am."

"Are you sure? It b.u.mps a whole lot-Ugh! It's not running away, is it?"

"I tell yuh it's tame all right," grunted Ike.

"Then, what's the matter with you, Ike Stedman?" demanded the schoolmistress, with considerable sharpness.

"I-I'm suah in love with yuh, Sally! That's what's the matter with me.

Now, don't you laugh-I mean it."

"Well, my soul!" exclaimed the practical Sally, "don't let it take such a hold on you, Ike. Other men have been in love before-or thought they was-and it ain't given 'em a conniption fit."

"I got it harder than most men," Ike was able to articulate. "Why, Sally, I love you so hard _that it makes me ache_!"

The red-haired schoolmistress looked at him for a silent moment. Her eyes were pretty hard at first; but finally a softer light came into them and a faint little blush colored her face.

"Well, Ike! is that all you've got to say?" she asked.

"Why-why, Sally! I got lots to say, only it's plugged up and I can't seem to get it out," stammered Ike. "I got five hundred head o' steers, and I've proven on a quarter-section of as nice land as there is in this State-and there's a good open range right beside it yet--"

"I never _did_ think I'd marry a bunch o' steers," murmured Sally.

"Why-why, Sally, punchin' cattle is about all I know how to do well,"

declared Bashful Ike. "But you say the word and I'll try any business you like better."

"I wouldn't want you to change your business, Ike," said Sally, turning her head away. "But-but ain't you got anything else to offer me but those steers?"

"Why-why," stammered poor Ike again. "I ain't got nothin' else but myself--"

She turned on him swiftly with her face all smiling and her eyes twinkling.

"There, Ike Stedman!" she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed in her old, sharp way. "Have you finally got around to offering _yourself_? My soul! if you practiced on every girl you met for the next hundred years you'd never learn how to ask her to marry you proper. I'd better take you, Ike, and save the rest of the female tribe a whole lot of trouble."

"D'ye mean it, Sally?" cried the bewildered and delighted foreman of Silver Ranch.

"I sure do."

"Ye-yi-yip!" yelled Ike, and the next moment the big touring car wabbled all over the trail and came near to dumping the loving pair into the gully.

CHAPTER XXIV-COALS OF FIRE

Once Bashful Ike had taken the bit in his teeth, his nickname never fitted him again. He believed in striking while the iron was hot, Ike did. And before the touring car ran them down into Bullhide, he had talked so hard and talked so fast that he had really swept Miss Sally d.i.c.kson away on the tide of his eloquence, and she had agreed to Ike's getting the marriage license and their being wedded on the spot!

But the foreman of Silver Ranch found Dr. Burgess first and made the physician promise to accompany him to Tintacker. The doctor said he would be ready in an hour.

"Gives us just about time enough, Sally," declared the suddenly awakened Ike. "I'll have that license and we'll catch Parson Brownlow on the fly.

Come on!"

"For pity's sake, Ike!" gasped the young lady. "You take my breath away."

"We ain't got no time to fool," declared Ike. And within the hour he was a Benedict and Sally d.i.c.kson had become Mrs. Ike Stedman.

"And I'm going over to Tintacker with you, Ike," she declared as they awaited before the doctor's office in the big automobile. "That poor fellow over there will need somebody more'n Ruth Fielding to nurse him.

It takes skill to bring folks out of a fever spell. I nursed Dad through a bad case of it two year ago, and I know what to do."

"That's all right, Sally," agreed Ike. "I'll make Old Bill give me muh time, if need be, and we'll spend our honeymoon at Tintacker. I kin fix up one of the old shacks to suit us to camp in. I don't wish that poor feller over there any harm," he added, smiling broadly at the pretty girl beside him, "but if it hadn't been that he got this fever, you an'

I wouldn't be married now, honey."

"You can thank Ruth Fielding-if you want to be thankful to anybody,"

returned Sally, in her brisk way. "But maybe you won't be so thankful a year or two from now, Ike."

Dr. Burgess came with his black bag and they were off. The automobile-as Sally said herself-behaved "like an angel," and they reached Silver Ranch (after halting for a brief time at the Crossing for Sally to pack _her_ bag and acquaint Old Lem d.i.c.kson of the sudden and unexpected change in her condition) late at night. Old Bill Hicks was off for Tintacker and the party remained only long enough to eat and for Bob Steele to go over the mechanism of the badly-shaken motor-car.

"I'll drive you on to the river myself, Ike," he said. "You are all going on from there on horseback, I understand, and I'll bring the machine back here."

But when the newly-married couple and the physician had eaten what Maria could hastily put before them, and were ready to re-enter the car, Mary c.o.x came out upon the verandah, ready to go likewise.

"For pity's sake, Mary!" gasped Heavy. "You don't want to ride over to the river with them."

"I'm going to those mines," said The Fox, defiantly.

"What for?" asked Jane Ann, who had arrived at the ranch herself only a short time before.