Again the girl blushed, but she found a bantering rejoinder: “With you and Kid and Daddy all waiting for me to come home, I suppose I’ll have to cut the season short.”
“The winters here are like those you read about up 75 at the North Pole,” the cowman informed Ashton. “But we get our sunshine back along in the spring.”
“Oh, Daddy! you’re a poet!” cried his daughter, flinging her arm around his sunburnt neck.
“Wish I were one!” enviously sighed Ashton. The cowman gave him a look that brought him to his feet. “Mr. Knowles,” he hastened to ask, “if you’ll kindly tell me what my work is to be this afternoon.”
The older man’s frown relaxed. “Did you come out here from Stockchute?”
“Yes.”
“Think you could find your way back?”
“Why, yes; though we wandered all around––But surely, Mr. Knowles, you’ll not require me––”
“I want a man to ride over with some letters and fetch the mail. I’ll need Gowan for work you can’t do. Chuckie was to have gone; but I can’t let her now, until we’re more sure about that man who shot at you.”
“I see.”