She lifted the big glass lamp down from its place on the clock shelf and lighted it with fingers not quite steady. “You men,” she remarked, “think women ought to be wrapped in pink cotton and put in a glass cabinet. If, by any miracle, the river should come up around the house, I flatter myself I should be able to cope with the situation. I'd just saddle my horse and ride out to high ground!”
“Would yuh?” Park grinned skeptically. “The road from here to the hill is half under water right now; the river's got over the bank above, and is flooding down through the horse pasture. By the time the water got up here the river'd be as wide and deep one side uh yuh as the other. Then where'd yuh be at?”
“It won't get up here, though,” Mona asserted coolly. “It never has.”
“No, and the Lazy Eight never had to work the Yellowstone range on spring roundup before either,” Park told her meaningly.
Whereupon Mona got upon her pedestal and smiled her unpleasant smile, against which even Park had no argument ready.
They lingered till long after all good cowpunchers are supposed to be in their beds—unless they are standing night-guard—but Jack failed to appear. The rain drummed upon the roof and the river swished and gurgled against the crumbling banks, and grumbled audibly to itself because the hills stood immovably in their places and set bounds which it could not pass, however much it might rage against their base.
When the clock struck a wheezy nine Mona glanced at it significantly and smothered a yawn more than half affected. It was a hint which no man with an atom of self-respect could overlook. With mutual understanding the two rose.
“I guess we'll have to be going,” Park said with some ceremony. “I kept think ing maybe Jack would show up; it ain't right to leave yuh here alone like this.”
“I don't see why not; I'm not the least bit afraid,” Mona said. Her tone was impersonal and had in it a note of dismissal.
So, there being nothing else that they could do, they said good-night and took themselves off.