"That's the yellow boy," she cheered him, as she pulled back her regular chair and sat down at the table to the right of her father who held the owner's place of honor at the head of the oblong board. "You cook me a beeve-steak special, with mushrooms and bamboo sprouts."
"From a can, the mushrooms," he advised her, and waddled off toward the kitchen which was divided from the dining-room by a partition that ran halfway to the unceiled roof.
Already she had scanned the faces about the oilcloth; all were familiar—regulars. If Jack—Jack Childress had been to the ranch since her departure that morning, either he had not stayed for supper or was under restraint somewhere about the home ranch. She was anxious, yet she scorned to ask questions. Covertly she studied the expression of "Smiling Dick" Murdock who, at his usual table place, had finished his meal and was smoking, his chair tilted back. "Scowling Dick" would have been a better name for him this evening. From the thunder cloud of his expression, she deduced that nothing serious had happened to their mysterious neighbor. Yet any reassurance gained from that source did not help her in solving the mystery in silver hair that the stable sheltered. She'd have to wait until meal's end and the nightly confab with her lonely parent, unless she wished to lay herself open to a show of interest that would have been inadvisable.
What little sense men had anyhow! Her father must have realized that she had seen the strange horse in the barn and he should have known that she was consumed with curiosity. But men would be men. She must wait or expose the hand that would show her interest in the owner of Open A.
The steak came shortly, broiled to that happy turn between medium and rare, and garnished to a degree that even Owner Sam could not have commanded from the Celestial chef. Nothing much was said while Flame ate, for all knew what that border air did to appetites. And the girl, her mind quite absorbed as to what and whyfor the silver stallion, kept knife and fork busy, occasionally dropping both implements to run fingers through her wondrous hair.
Not until she had pushed back her plate and refused the "slab" of pie offered by Chan Toy—on the ground that she had some respect for her girlish figure—did Dick Murdock speak to her directly.
"It's been a hard day for all of us, Flame," he began, banishing the frown, and replacing it with the nearest he knew to a look of adoration. "Can't we have a bit of close harmony on just one or two of the old songs. Start it off, pal!"
Flame looked at her father. He was comfortably sprawled in his big chair at the head of the table, his meal-time cigar half smoked, his entire manner one of content. Nothing alarming or even startling could she see in his attitude. This seemed to be just like a hundred other evenings after a hard day's work on the range. Yet there was the silver stallion box-stalled in the Lazy G stables! What did it mean? Was the outfit by prearrangement trying to lull her to a sense of security about this man she wanted to doubt, but could not—this stranger who seemed to be playing the only other woman on the Fire Weed range? Entirely possible. But she would not weaken, even to ask questions.
"I'm pretty tired, boys," she said, after an appealing look at her father, which that worthy chose to ignore. "But a little harmony, not too close, might rest all of us. Shall it be, 'Bringing In the Sheaves' or 'What Shall the Harvest Be?'?"
"Rustlers," murmured Rust, from his place at the far end of the table, evidently in answer to the interrogation of the last song title.