Monty, it transpired, had promised to help a man through haying over in Pahranagat Valley and meant to start the next day. He was frankly relieved to know that Gary was still all right. He had wanted to ride over to Johnnywater again before going to Pahranagat, but had had too much riding of his own to do.
“But if you’re bent on hangin’ out there,” he said, after some futile argument, “I’ll ride on over when I get through with this job. What yuh-all trying to do over there, anyway? Hate yourself to death?”
“Well, I hope I’m pleasing Pat,” Gary laughed evasively.
“Well, I hate to be butting in,” Monty said diffidently, “but if she wanted yuh to stay over here and run Johnnywater, it don’t seem to me like she’d ’a’ sent this Hawkins feller over with a five years’ contract to run the place on shares. Didn’t she send yuh no word about why she done it?”
“She did not! I have a hunch Pat’s pretty sore at me. You see, she sprung this deal on me kinda sudden, right on top of a strawberry shortcake when I didn’t want to think. I told her what I thought about it—and I told it straight. So we had a little—er—argument. She up and threw my profile in my face, and called me flabby souled. So I up and left. And I didn’t go back to tell her good-by when I started over here, so I wouldn’t be surprised if little Pat Connolly is pretty well peeved.”
Monty smoked and studied the matter. “Does she know you’re over here?” he asked abruptly. “Seems kinda funny to me, that she’d go and send Hawkins over here without sayin’ a word to yuh about it. She could ’a’ wrote, couldn’t she? If yuh-all didn’t tell her yuh was coming, how would she know yuh was here?”
“Why, she could call up the studio and get the dope from Mills, my director,” Gary explained uncomfortably.
“But would she? Seems like as if I was a girl and had any spunk, I wouldn’t want to let on that the feller I was engaged to had gone off somewheres without letting me know about it.”
“That’s one way to look at it,” Gary admitted. “But Pat’s nobody’s fool. She could find out all right, without letting on.”
“Well, it’s none of my put-in—but I don’t reckon yuh-all are pleasing Pat Connolly much by sticking over here.”