"I couldn't hear you," I suggested.
"Oh, all right!" She listened wistfully a moment to the now slightly dulled oratorio, then: "Yes, Angus McDonald is his name; but there are two kinds of Scotch, and Angus is the other kind. Of course he's one of the big millionaires now, with money enough to blind any kind of a Scotchman, but he was the other kind even when he first come out to us, a good thirty years ago, without a cent. He's a kind of second or third cousin of mine by marriage or something—I never could quite work it out—and he'd learned his trade back in Ohio; but he felt that the East didn't have any future to speak of, so he decided to come West. He was a painter and grainer and kalsominer and paperhanger, that kind of thing—a good, quiet boy about twenty-five, not saying much, chunky and slow-moving but sure, with a round Scotch head and a snub nose, and one heavy eyebrow that run clean across his face—not cut in two like most are.
"He landed on the ranch and slowly looked things over and let on after a few days that he mebbe would be a cowboy on account of it taking him outdoors more than kalsomining would. Lysander John was pretty busy, but he said all right, and gave him a saddle and bridle and a pair of bull pants and warned him about a couple of cinch-binders that he mustn't try to ride or they would murder him. And so one morning Angus asked a little bronch-squeezer we had, named Everett Sloan, to pick him out something safe to ride, and Everett done so. Brought him up a nice old rope horse that would have been as safe as a supreme-court judge, but the canny Angus says: 'No, none of your tricks now! That beast has the very devil in his eye, and you wish to sit by and laugh your fool head off when he displaces me.' 'Is that so?' says Everett. 'I suspect you,' says Angus. 'I've read plentifully about the tricks of you cowlads.' 'Pick your own horse, then,' says Everett. 'I'd better,' says Angus, and picks one over by the corral gate that was asleep standing up, with a wisp of hay hanging out of his mouth like he'd been too tired to finish eating it. 'This steed is more to my eye,' says Angus. 'He's old and withered and he has no evil ambitions. But maybe I can wake him up.' 'Maybe you can,' says Everett, 'but are you dead sure you want to?' Angus was dead sure. 'I shall thwart your murderous design,' says he. So Everett with a stung look helped him saddle this one. He had his alibi all right, and besides, nothing ever did worry that buckaroo as long as his fingers wasn't too cold to roll a cigarette.
"The beast was still asleep when Angus forked him. Without seeming to wake up much he at once traded ends, poured Angus out of the saddle, and stacked him up in some mud that was providentially there—mud soft enough to mire your shadow. Angus got promptly up, landed a strong kick in the ribs of the outlaw which had gone to sleep again before he lit, shook hands warmly with Everett and says: 'What does a man need with two trades anyway? Good-bye!'
"But when Lysander John hears about it he says Angus has just the right stuff in him for a cowman. He says he has never known one yet that you could tell anything to before he found it out for himself, and Angus must sure have the makings of a good one, so he persuades him to stay round for a while, working at easy jobs that couldn't stack him up, and later he sent him to Omaha with the bunch in charge of a trainload of steers.
"The trip back was when his romance begun. Angus had kept fancy-free up to that time, being willing enough but thoroughly cautious. Do you remember the eating-house at North Platte, Nebraska? The night train from Omaha would reach there at breakfast time and you'd get out in the frosty air, hungry as a confirmed dyspeptic, and rush into the big red building past the man that was rapidly beating on a gong with one of these soft-ended bass-drum sticks. My, the good hot smells inside! Tables already loaded with ham and eggs and fried oysters and fried chicken and sausage and fried potatoes and steaks and hot biscuits and corn bread and hot cakes and regular coffee—till you didn't know which to begin on, and first thing you knew you had your plate loaded with too many things—but how you did eat!—and yes, thank you, another cup of coffee, and please pass the sirup this way. And no worry about the train pulling out, because there the conductor is at that other table and it can't go without him, so take your time—and about three more of them big fried oysters, the only good fried ones I ever had in the world! To this day I get hungry thinking of that North Platte breakfast, and mad when I go into the dining-car as we pass there and try to get the languid mulatto to show a little enthusiasm.
"Well, they had girls at that eating-house. Of course no one ever noticed 'em much, being too famished and busy. You only knew in a general way that females was passing the food along. But Angus actually did notice Ellabelle, though it must have been at the end of the meal, mebbe when she was pouring the third cup. Ellabelle was never right pretty to my notion, but she had some figure and kind of a sad dignity, and her brown hair lacked the towers and minarets and golden domes that the other girls built with their own or theirs by right of purchase. And she seems to have noticed Angus from the very first. Angus saw that when she wasn't passing the fried chicken or the hot biscuits along, even for half a minute, she'd pick up a book from the window sill and glance studiously at its pages. He saw the book was called 'Lucile.' And he looked her over some more—between mouthfuls, of course—the neat-fitting black dress revealing every line of her lithe young figure, like these magazine stories say, the starched white apron and the look of sad dignity that had probably come of fresh drummers trying to teach her how to take a joke, and the smooth brown hair—he'd probably got wise to the other kind back in the social centres of Ohio—and all at once he saw there was something about her. He couldn't tell what it was, but he knew it was there. He heard one of the over-haired ones call her Ellabelle, and he committed the name to memory.
"He also remembered the book she was reading. He come back with a copy he'd bought at Spokane and kept it on his bureau. Not that he read it much. It was harder to get into than 'Peck's Bad Boy,' which was his favourite reading just then.
"Pretty soon another load of steers is ready—my sakes, what scrubby runts we sent off the range in them days compared to now!—and Angus pleads to go, so Lysander John makes a place for him and, coming back, here's Ellabelle handing the hot things along same as ever, with 'Lucile' at hand for idle moments. This time Angus again made certain there was something about her. He cross-examined her, I suppose, between the last ham and eggs and the first hot cakes. Her folks was corn farmers over in Iowa and she'd gone to high school and had meant to be a teacher, but took this job because with her it was anything to get out of Iowa, which she spoke of in a warm, harsh way.
"Angus nearly lost the train that time, making certain there was something about her. He told her to be sure and stay there till he showed up again. He told me about her when he got back. 'There's something about her,' he says. 'I suspect it's her eyes, though it might be something else.'