Ruth, with a slant of dark eyes toward her guest, asked him a question: “Do you call this two weeks?”
“I call it a month, reckoning by my feelings.”
She scoffed. “It’s a pity about your feelings. I told you not to come again for two weeks.”
“I thought as I happened to be passing——”
“On your way to nowhere.”
“—that I’d drop in and say ‘Buenas tardes.’ ”
“Good of you, I’m sure.”
He settled himself comfortably on the porch against a pillar. “I want to ask your advice. I’m just a plain cow-puncher and you’re a wise young lady from a city. So you can tell me all about it. I’m getting old and lonesome, and my mind has been running on a girl a heap.”
Her glance took in the slim, wiry youth at her feet. She smiled. “You’d better ask Mrs. Flanders. I’m too young to advise you.”
“No. You’re just the right age. I’ll tell you about her. There never was anybody prettier—not in Wyoming. She’s fresh and sweet, like those wild roses we picked in Bear Creek Cañon. Her eyes are kind o’ rippled by a laugh ’way down deep in them, then sometimes they are dark and still and—sort of tender. She has the kindest heart in the world—and the cruelest. I wouldn’t want a better partner, though she’s as wild as an unbroken bronc sometimes. You never can tell when she’s going to bolt.”