“No, but I’m goin’ to in ’bout a minute,” answered Judy, who shook hands and commented on each member of the Overland party as Joe Bindloss introduced her. “Some knock-down, ain’t it?” grinned Judy after the introductions had been finished. “My Pap says you folks ain’t no great scratch an’ that you ain’t here for no good. Pap says that Old Joe Bindloss better build a corral ’bout his cattle or he’ll lose ’em with all these new folks roamin’ ’round in the hills. Be you a fine lady, or ain’t you?” demanded the mountain girl, fixing her eyes on Elfreda Briggs. J. Elfreda flushed under the scrutiny.
“No. I am just a plain, ordinary woman, a bachelor girl and—”
“In other words, an old maid, Miss Hornby,” Emma Dean explained.
“Cut the ‘Miss.’ My name’s Judy. What’s your handle?”
“Emma.”
“All right, Emma. Now the rest of you give me your handles, then we’ll be down to cases,” whereupon the Overlanders dutifully gave her their given names. “My gosh! What a lot of highfalutin’ names. I should think they would keep you folks awake nights.”
The Overlanders laughed heartily and Judy joined in the laugh, though with little idea what she was laughing at. The mountain girl had, in her lifetime, seen but few persons who did not belong to desert or mountain, and these bright-eyed girls were a revelation to her, because, as she expressed it, “most all that kind is stuck up.”
If Judy was interested in her new acquaintances, they surely were even more attracted to her. She was a splendid type, her dark, handsome face unspoiled by the strenuous outdoor life she led, and her figure possessing lines that would have been the envy of any woman. Judy was only nineteen, so she said, but she looked more. That she could ride, the Overlanders had the evidence of their own eyes, and that she could shoot, was to be inferred from the business-like looking revolver that swung at her hip.
“Not all are ‘stuck up,’” differed Grace laughingly. “We are not. If we were we probably should not be here, roughing it, when we might be at home taking our ease and getting fat.”
“Judy, you mustn’t take too seriously what Grace says. Remember, she and Nora are here with their husbands, both old married women, here because their husbands want to live part of the year in the open. That’s the way women do when they love their husbands,” volunteered Elfreda.