“Come this way, sir. Miss Kate will see you,” he said, and led the big man into the front of the house.
“I don’t want none o’ your ‘Miss Kates,’” growled the stranger. “I want my Jane Ann.”
Heavy’s little Aunt looked very dainty indeed when she appeared before this gigantic Westerner. The moment he saw her, off came his big hat, displaying a red, freckled face, and a head as bald as an egg. He was a very ugly man, saving when he smiled; then innumerable humorous wrinkles appeared about his eyes and the pale blue eyes themselves twinkled confidingly.
“Your sarvent, ma’am,” he said. “Your name Stone?”
“It is, sir. I presume you are ‘W. Hicks’?” she said.
“That’s me–Bill Hicks. Bill Hicks, of Bullhide, Montanny.”
“I hope you have not come here, Mr. Hicks, to be disappointed. But I must tell you at the start,” said Miss Kate, “that I never heard of you before I received your very remarkable telegram.”
“Huh! that can well be, ma’am–that can well be. But they got your letter at the ranch, and Jib, he took it into Colonel Penhampton, and the Colonel telegraphed me to New York, where I’d come a-hunting her––”
“Wait, wait, wait!” cried Miss Kate, eagerly. “I don’t understand at all what you are talking about.”
“Why–why, I’m aimin’ to talk about my Jane Ann,” exclaimed the cattle man.