"Poor Sunset. Perhaps—you're right."
"Without a doubt," Gordon laughed. "He might get blood poisoning, or cancer, or dyspepsia, or something if we bustled him."
Hazel pointed a branching trail to the north.
"That's the trail," she said. "Father's at home. He'll be real glad to see you. Say, you know father ought to know better—at his age. He—he just loves a scrap. He was telling me about you, and saying how you 'hammered'—that's the word he used—the 'sharp.' He was most upset that the train crew spoiled the finish. You know father's a great scallywag. I don't believe he thinks he's a day over twenty. It's—it's dreadful—with a grown-up daughter. He's—just a great big boy for all his gray hair. You should just see him out on the range. He's got all the youngsters left standing. It must be grand to grow old like he does."
Gordon listened to the girl's rich tones, and the enthusiasm lying behind her words, and somehow the whole situation seemed unreal. Here he was driving one of the most perfectly delightful girls he had ever met to her home, within twenty-four hours of his absurd arrival in a still more absurd town. Nor was she any mere country girl. Her whole style spoke of an education obtained at one of the great schools in the East. Her costume might have been tailored on Fifth Avenue, New York. Yet here she was living the life of the wonderful sunlit prairie, the daughter of an obscure rancher in the foothills of the Rockies.
"Say, your father is just a bully feller," he agreed quickly. "He didn't know me from—a grasshopper, but he did me all sorts of a good service. It don't matter what it was. But it was one of those things which between men count a whole heap."
The girl's enthusiasm waxed.
"Father's just as good as—as he's clever. But," she added tenderly, "he's a great scallywag. Oh dear, he'll never grow up." A few minutes later she pointed quickly ahead with one gauntleted hand.
"That's Buffalo Point," she said. "There where that house is. That's our house, and beyond it, half a mile, you can see the telegraph poles of the railroad track."
Gordon gazed ahead. They still had a good mile to go. The lonely house fixed his attention.