Tim Flanders, owner of the ranch, was sitting on the porch smoking a postprandial pipe, his chair tilted back and his feet propped against one of the posts. At sight of Miss Trovillion, who was a favourite of his, the legs of the chair and his feet came to the floor simultaneously.
“Don’t disturb yourself on my account, Mr. Flanders,” she told him. “I’m not staying.”
“Might as well ’light an’ stay for a while,” he said, and dragged a chair forward.
Ruth stood for a moment, as though uncertain, before she sat down. “Well, I will, thank you, since you’ve taken so much trouble.”
They sat in silence, the girl looking across at the dark blue-black line of mountains which made a jagged outline against a sky not quite so dark. She had not yet lived long enough among the high hills to have got over her wonder at their various aspects under different lights and atmospheres.
“It’s been kinda hot to-day for this time o’ year,” her host said at last by way of a conversational advance.
“Yes,” she agreed. “But it will be June in a few days. Doesn’t it begin to get warmer here then?”
“Not what you’d call real warm, ma’am. We’re a mile high, an’ then some more on top o’ that,” he reminded her.
Presently, the subject of the weather having been exhausted, Flanders offered another gambit.
“I hope, ma’am, you didn’t break any more cowboy hearts to-day.”