“Help! Help!” expostulated Forbes.
“Oh, if you’ve got your eye on one of these little flapper girls, of course, there’s no use my saying a word,” she teased. “I know how stubborn you are when you get ‘sot.’”
She was in a mood of happy reaction from the fears that had oppressed her all day. Dr. Rayburn had told her—with some reservations, to be sure—that, barring unexpected complications, Hollister ought to get well. It would take time and nursing and good food, but all of these the patient would get.
“You’re right I’ve got my eye on one of them li’l’ flapper girls—this very minute,” he rapped back promptly. “An’ she’s a sure-enough warnin’ to a fellow to play his hand out alone unless he wants to be bossed somethin’ scandalous.”
“It would do you good to be bossed,” she told him, eyes dancing. “The refining influence of a young woman—say about forty-five or maybe fifty—”
“You’re pickin’ her for me, are you?” he snorted.
“She’ll do the picking when the time comes. I suppose you’ll have to give up smoking—and you’ll have to shave every day—and probably be a deacon in the church at Wild Horse—”
“Yes, I will not. All I got to do is look at Clint an’ see how a half-grown kid has got a check rein on him. That scares me a plenty.” He shook his head in mock despair, but his eyes gave him away. “Gallivantin’ into the hills, through ’steen million tons of snow, to nurse a scalawag who—”
“He’s no scalawag, Lon Forbes.”
“Like to know why he ain’t. Nothin’ but a hobo when you first met up with him.”