With that he stopped the hand which was bearing the soiled apron toward his neck, and produced from his pocket—marvelous to behold!—a handkerchief of stainless white, with which he rubbed away the coffee.
“Jacqueline!” rumbled her father, and his accent made the name far more emphatic than Maurie’s “damnation.”
That was her given title, but to every cow-puncher on the ranges she was known as “Jac” During, who rode, shot, and sometimes swore as well as any man of them all. She was Jacqueline to her father alone, and to him only at such a time as this.
“Well?” she said belligerently, and her eyes fixed on her father as steadily and as angrily as those of a man.
“Your hands was made for feet! Go back to the kitchen. We don’t need you till the boys is through with their coffee. Too bad, Maurie.”
“Nothin’ at all!” said the latter heartily, and waved the matter out of existence.
He might banish Jac from his thoughts with a gesture, but he could not drive away her thoughts of him so easily, it seemed; for she stopped in the shadow of the doorway which led into the kitchen and stared back with big eyes at the cow-puncher.
“Who you takin’ to the dance?” said her father.
“Dolly Maxwell,” said Maurie, naming the prettiest girl in many, many miles.
“That pale-faced—thing!” muttered Jac, relapsing into a feminine vocabulary at this crisis. But she sighed as she turned back into the kitchen.