“You’re too fat, dad,” laughed his daughter Mamie.
“Fat! And I only weigh two hundred. If you can catch a man of my size, miss, you can be thankful.”
“There’s going to be a hop to-night,” went on Mrs. Colonel, “and I’ve been trying to get Dell to say she’ll go.”
“Dancing is also off my sky-line,” explained Dell calmly. “I didn’t bring any clothes for that sort of thing, anyhow. Look at me!” and she stood out in front of the colonel. “I’d be a fright on a ballroom floor, wouldn’t I?”
The colonel did look at her, and there was admiration in his eyes.
Tall, lithe, and fair-haired, the girl was clad in her fringed and beaded buckskin shirt, knee-length buckskin skirt, tan shoes and leggings, and a rakish little brown sombrero.
She wore about her waist the belt with the diminutive revolver-holsters and a knife-sheath swinging from it. The pearl handle of a knife showed over the top of the sheath, but the holsters were empty, Dell having laid aside the six-shooters out of regard for Mrs. Colonel’s feelings.
Trave Dauntless, Dell’s father, had been a hard and fast friend of Colonel Grayson’s. When Trave Dauntless died, the colonel had felt himself instinctively drawn toward Mrs. Dauntless and Dell. When the colonel came to Grant, he had expressed a desire for Dell to come and visit him; and, for that reason, the girl had been at the post for a few days.
“’Pon my soul, Dell,” said the colonel, “that costume of yours is mighty fetching!”
“Colonel!” rebuked Mrs. Colonel; “how can you talk so? You’re giving Dell a lot of wrong ideas. Now, if she would only go to the hop to-night, Mamie would let her take one of her dresses——”