“No, you’re dead right, Miss Chuckie,” he agreed. “There shore ain’t any joke about it.”
“Ah, but perhaps I can make one,” gayly dissented Ashton. “Had you not interfered, Miss Chuckie, the poor snake would have taken one bite, and then curled up and died. I’m so charged with nicotine, you know.”
Neither Isobel nor the puncher smiled at this ancient witticism. But Knowles burst into a hearty laugh, 112 which was caught up and reënforced by the hitherto silent haymakers.
“By––James! Ashton, you’ll do!” declared the cowman, wiping his eyes. “When a tenderfoot can let off a joke like that on himself it’s a sure sign he’s getting acclimated. Yes, you’ll make a puncher, some day.”
Ashton smiled with gratification, and looked at Isobel in eager-eyed appeal for the confirmation of the statement. She smiled and nodded.
Upon his return from his remarkable ride to town she had assured him that he need not worry. Her present kindly look and the words of her father might have been expected to remove his last doubts. Such in fact was the result for the remainder of the evening.
But that night the new employé must have given much anxious thought to the question of his future and his great need to “make good.” The liveliness of his concern was shown by his behavior during the next two weeks. His zeal for work astonished Knowles quite as much as his efforts to be agreeable to his fellow employés gratified Miss Isobel. He charmed the Japanese cook with his praise of the cooking, he flattered the haymakers with his interest in their opinions. Towards the girl and her father he was impeccably respectful.
Within ten days he was “Lafe” to everybody except 113 Gowan and the Jap. The latter addressed him as “Mistah Lafe”; Gowan kept to the noncommittal “Ashton.” The puncher had become more taciturn than ever, but missed none of the home evenings in the parlor. He watched Ashton with catlike closeness when Isobel was present, and seemed puzzled that the interloper refrained from courting her.
“Don’t savvy that tenderfoot,” he remarked one day to Knowles. “All his talk about his dad being a multimillionaire––Acted like it at the start-off. Came down to this candidate-for-office way of comporting himself. It ain’t natural.”
“Not when he’s on the same range with Chuckie?” queried the cowman, his eyes twinkling. “Why don’t you ever go into Stockchute and paint the town red?”