“But never mind,” continued Grant, reflectively, “I will run my subscriptions up to three or four hundred in sixty days when the snow is off the ground.”
“Yes, that is all very well, old man. But when will the snow be off? I am considerably interested myself, for I want to do some prospecting.”
“Hang your prospecting,” said Grant, “or when the snow will go either. You haven’t answered my question.”
“Oh, as to whether anyone has been browsing on your range?” exclaimed Roderick. “I must confess I do not know. They have had dances and parties and all that sort of thing but—I really don’t know, I have not felt in the mood and declined to attend. How do you find the little queen of your heart? Has she forgotten you?”
“No-o,” responded Grant, slowly. “But dam it all, I can’t talk very well before the whole family. I am an out-door man. You give me the hills as a background and those millions of wild flowers that color our valleys along in July like Joseph’s coat, and it makes me bubble over with poetry and I can talk to beat a phonograph monologist.” This was said in a jovial, joking tone, but beneath it all Roderick knew there was much serious truth.
“How is it, Grant? Are you pretty badly hit?”
“Right square between the eyes, old man. Why, do you know, sitting over in that rocky gorge of Dillon canyon in the little town of Dillon, writing editorials for the Double jack month after month and no one to read my paper, I have had time to think it all over, and I have made up my mind to come here to the Shields ranch and tell Dorothy it is my firm conviction that she is the greatest woman on top of the earth, and that life to me without her is simply—well, I don’t have words to describe the pitiful loneliness of it all without her.”
Roderick leaned back in his chair and laughed hilariously at his friend.
“This is no joking matter,” said Grant. “I’m a goner.”
Just then there came a knock at the door and Roderick hastily arose to bid welcome to the caller. To the surprise of both the visitor proved to be Major Buell Hampton.