“Will this evening do?”
“I’ll be looking for you, Mr. McCoy.”
The cattleman told the simple truth when he said that he had not forgotten her. The girl had been very much in his mind ever since he had left her at the gate of the Lodge. He loved all young, clean life even among animals, and she seemed to him the embodied youth of the world, free and light-footed as a fawn in the misty break of day.
When McCoy reached Elkhorn Lodge after dinner Ruth introduced him to her aunt, a thin, flat-bosomed spinster with the marks of ill health on her face. Miss Morgan and her niece had come to the Rockies for the health of the older woman, and were scheduled to make an indefinite stay. Before the cattleman had talked with her five minutes he knew that Miss Morgan viewed life from a narrow, Puritanic standpoint. He guessed that there was little real sympathy between her and the vivid girl by her side.
In her early years Ruth had been a lonely, repressed little soul. An orphaned child, she had been brought up by this maiden lady, who looked on the leggy, helter-skelter youngster with the tangled flying hair as a burden laid upon her by the Lord. Ruth had been a lawless, wilful little thing, naughty and painfully plain by the standard of her aunt; a difficult little girl to train in the way she should go.
Surprisingly she had blossomed from the ugly-duckling stage into a most attractive girl. Nobody had been more amazed at the transformation than her aunt. The change was not merely external. The manner of Ruth had become gentler, less wilful. As a nurse she had developed patience toward the invalid.
“Do you mind if Mr. McCoy and I ride out to Flat Top for the sunset?” she asked now.
“No, child. I’ll be all right. But don’t stay late,” Miss Morgan assented a little fretfully. It was one of Ruth’s ways to become absorbed in the interest of the moment to forgetfulness of everything else. This was one of the penalties her friends paid for her vivid enthusiasms.
The riders passed a poster tacked to a tree just outside the gates of the ranch. It bore this legend:
| RIDE ’EM, COWBOYS! | ||
| ANNUAL ROUND-UP AT BAD AX | ||
| July 2, 3, and 4. | ||
| ———— | ||
| Best Bronco Busters, Ropers, | ||
| And Bulldoggers | ||
| From a Dozen States Will Compete | ||
| FOR WORLD’S CHAMPIONSHIP | ||
| ———— | ||
| Pony Races, Indian Dances, Balls, | ||
| and Street Carnival. | ||
| ———— | ||
| Also Fancy Roping and Riding | ||
| ———— | ||
| Don’t Miss This Great Round-Up. | ||
| It’s a Big League Show. | ||