"You two still standing there as if there were nothing to do! Get a big fire on in the outside stove and kill about half the chickens. You're not to come in, Harry Ormesby, until I've fixed you so you're fit to be seen."
I feared that Lucille heard her, and wondered what she thought. Our mode of life was widely different from that at Bonaventure and from what would have been for me possible had I not fallen into the hands of Lane.
We slew the chickens with the assistance of the newcomers, and sat down on the grass to pluck them, a fowl for every guest, although I was slightly uncertain whether that would be sufficient. There is a similarity between the very old and the very new, and ancient poets perhaps best portray the primitive, sometimes heroic, life of effort the modern stockrider and plowman lead on the prairie.
"Why did you bring Miss Haldane, Boone? You should have known better than to allow her to run the slightest risk," I said, on opportunity; and the photographer smiled enigmatically.
"Miss Haldane did not ask my permission, and I am doubtful whether anybody could have prevented her. She said she was mistress of Bonaventure, and the way the men stirred when she told them was proof enough that one could believe her."
Presently Sally came out with a roll of sticking-plaster, and, while every bachelor present offered assistance and advice, she proceeded to "fix me," as she expressed it. Then, amid a burst of laughter, she stood back a little to survey her work with pride.
"I guess you can come in. You look too nice for anything. Gordon and Adams, you'll walk in, too. The rest will find all you want in the cook shed, and it will be your own fault if you don't help yourselves."
I was a little astonished when, with a cloth bound round my head, I entered the house, for Miss Steel was in some respects a genius. There was no trace of disorder. Sally was immaculately neat; Lucille Haldane might never have passed the door of Bonaventure; and the two had apparently become good friends, while a table had been set out with Sally's pretty crockery, and, as I noticed, an absolutely spotless cloth, which was something of a rarity. I was glad of the presence of Boone, for Gordon was a big, gaunt, silent man, and the events of the day had driven any conversational gifts we possessed out of both Steel and myself. When it pleased him, Adams, by which name alone he was known to the rest, could entertain anybody, and that, too, in their own particular idiom. There was no trace of the pedlar about him now, and his English was the best spoken in the Old Country. I noticed Lucille Haldane looked hard at him when she took her place at the table.
"It is curious, but I have been haunted by a feeling that we have met before to-day," she said. "If I am mistaken, it must have been somebody who strongly resembles you."
For just a moment Boone looked uneasy, but he answered with a smile: "I don't monopolize all the good looks on the prairie."