“Howdy do, Miss,” responded Creede, fumbling for his hat, and as Miss Lucy took his hand the man who had put the fear of God into the hearts of so many sheep-herders became dumb and tongue-tied with bashfulness. There was not a man in the Four Peaks country that could best him, in anger or in jest, when it called for the ready word; but Kitty Bonnair had so stolen his wits that he could only stand and sweat like a trick-broken horse. As for Hardy he saw rainbows and his heart had gone out of business, but still he was “parlor-broke.”
“I am afraid you didn’t find the house very orderly,” he observed, as Creede backed off and the conversation sagged; and the two girls glanced at each other guiltily. “Of course you’re just as welcome,” he added hastily, “and I suppose you couldn’t help cleaning house a bit; but you gave us both a bad scare, all the same. Didn’t you notice how pale we looked?” he asked, to mask his embarrassment. “But you were right, Jeff,” he continued enigmatically.
“Does he always defer to you that way, Mr. Creede?” inquired Kitty Bonnair, with an engaging 199 smile. “We used to find him rather perverse.” She glanced roguishly at Hardy as she gave this veiled rebuke. “But what was it that you were right about?––I’m just dying to ask you questions!”
She confessed this with a naive frankness which quite won the big cowboy’s heart, and, his nerve coming back, he grinned broadly at his former suspicions.
“Well,” he said, “I might as well come through with it––I told him I bet we’d been jumped.”
“Jumped?” repeated Miss Kitty, mystified. “Oh, is that one of your cowboy words? Tell me what it means!”
“W’y, it means,” drawled Creede, “that two young fellers like me and Rufe goes out to ride the range and when we come back some other outfit has moved into our happy home and we’re orphans. We’ve been havin’ a little trouble with the sheep lately, and when I heard them pots and kittles rattlin’ around in here I thought for sure some Mormon sheepman had got the jump on us and located the ranch.”
“And what would you have done if he had?” continued Kitty eagerly. “Would you have shot him with that big pistol?” She pointed to the heavy Colt’s which Creede had slung on his hip.
But this was getting too romantic and Western, even for Jeff. “No, ma’am,” he said modestly. “We just carry that to balance us in the saddle.”