Recalling the effect of her brushing skirts, Bull blushed, and under the stimulus of personal experience he divined the inwardness of the question. “Sure! She was showing him how to hog-tie a steer t’other day. It lashed out an’ upset them an’ for a minute they was that balled up you kedn’t tell t’other from which. Didn’t seem a bit anxious to let go, either.”
“That’s favorable,” the widow nodded thoughtfully. “Looking at it from a distance, I should say what was needed is a little competition. It’s the life of love as well as trade. A man and a girl are like fire and tow. They’ll go along, nice as you please, till a little rivalry blows up like a wind, then—up in a blaze they go. Has Ramon been at Los Arboles since Mr. Nevil came?”
“A couple of times. But Gordon was out with us on the range, an’ Ramon was gone afore we kem in.”
“It’s a pity he hadn’t been there. He’d feel the same about as we do, and he wouldn’t be human if he didn’t try to cut Ramon out. Let me see.” She mused for a while, chin propped in her hands. Then her face lit up. “I know! I’m having a birthday next week. I’ll make a little party and invite Ramon and Lee. You’ll see to it that Gordon brings her here?”
“But then Bull won’t be able to come,” Betty’s small voice piped, indignantly. “And you told me only yesterday that you weren’t going to ask any one but him.”
Now the widow blushed. But she braved it out. “So I did, dear, and I’d rather have him. But when Lee’s happiness is at stake we’ll have to give up our own pleasure. And you mustn’t call him that. ’Tisn’t respectful. Say Mr. Perrin.”
“But Jake and Sliver do it, and he said I could—didn’t you, Bull? There, you see!” Thus triumphantly vindicated, she was proceeding with further revelations. “Mother will be thirty-sev—” when the widow clapped her hand over the small, traitorous mouth.
She broke into a little, conscious laugh. “I know it’s silly. But was there ever a real woman that would own up to her age? I won’t acknowledge to a day over thirty.”
“And you look five years younger than that, ma’am,” Bull gallantly replied.
He was paid, of course, with a brilliant smile, and, the conspiracy thus consummated, they gradually drifted into one of those pleasant talks, warm, intimate, communicative, which have been banished from the hectic, electric cities, but still linger where the habitants of the mountains, forest, desert, range, spend long evenings under the golden lamplight or flickering fire-blaze. From news of their countryside, rumors of raids and revolutions, neighborhood gossip, it passed on to a closer, more personal note, touching their thoughts, hopes, aspirations.