"The rube apologizes, ma'am. He's just in from Cactus Center and never did see one of those moving-picture outfits before. Thirty-eleven things were in sight as I happened round that bend, but the only one I glimmed was you being mistreated. Corking chance for a grandstand play. So I sailed in pronto. 'Course I should've known better, but I didn't."
Maisie Winters was the name of the young woman. She played the leads in one of the Southwest companies of the Lunar Film Manufacturers. Her charming face was known and liked on the screens of several continents. Now it broke into lines of mischievous amusement.
"I don't mind if Mr. Harrison doesn't." She flashed a gay, inquiring look toward that discomfited villain, who was leaning for support on his accomplice Jackson and glaring at Yeager. Impudently she tilted her chin back toward the puncher. "Are you always so—so impetuous? If so, there's a fortune waiting for you in the moving-picture field."
Yeager did not object to having so attractive a young woman as this one poke fun at him. He grinned joyfully.
"Me! I'm open to an engagement, ma'am."
The short fat man whom Maisie Winters had called Billie looked sharply at the cowpuncher out of shrewd gray eyes.
"Where you been working?" he demanded abruptly.
"With the Lone Star outfit."
"Get fired?"
"Company gone out of business—country getting too popular, what with homesteaders, forest rangers, and Mary's little lamb," explained Steve.