“Yes, ma’am, and a menace to a large number of cowmen, your father among them.”
The girl sank back and allowed him to relate the story of his adventures up to the present time, including the interview with Beef. At the description of that she smiled grimly; and he, noting the fact, told himself that it would take a masterly character to subdue that free, wild pride.
“Now, Julie,” he concluded, “do me the favor of instilling reason into your father. I’ve done my best and we have parted without murder, but that’s all. I’ve got to have a friend at court or I will be ruined before I commence.” 25
The girl was silent for a few minutes and sat looking down at her slippered feet.
“Bud,” she said at last, “you’ve never known me to tell anything but the truth, and I’m going to tell it to you now. I will be your friend in everything except where you ask me to yield my loyalty to my father and his interests. He is the most wonderful father a girl ever had, and if he were to say that black was white, I should probably swear to it if he asked me to.”
“I admire you for that,” said Bud genuinely, although all his hopes in this powerful ally went glimmering. “Let’s not talk shop any longer. It’s too good just to see you to think about anything but that.”
So, for a while, they reminisced of the days of their former friendship, by tacit agreement avoiding any reference to intimate things. And Larkin felt spring up in him the old love that he had convinced himself was dead; so that he added to his first resolution to succeed on the range, a second, that he would, in the end, conquer Juliet Bissell.
The thought was pleasing, for it meant another struggle, another outlet for the energies and activities that had so long lain dormant in him. And with the undaunted courage of youth he looked 26 eagerly toward the battle that should win this radiant girl.
But for the present he knew he must not betray himself by word, look or action; other things of greater moment must be settled.
At last, as they talked, the cook, a long-suffering Chinaman, seized a huge brass bell and rang it with all his might, standing in the door of the cook house.