“The scholars you’ll have at my ranch are children,” he replied. “Well, we’d better be starting if we are to get there before dark. It’s a long ride. Is this all your baggage?”
Springer led her over to the buckboard and helped her in, then stowed the valise under the back seat. “Here, let me put this robe over you,” he said. “It’ll be dusty. And when we’get up on the ridge it’s cold.” At this juncture Tex came to life and he started forward. But Andy and Nevada and Panhandle stood motionless, staring at the fresh and now flushed face of the young school teacher. Tex untied the halter of the spirited team and they began to prance. He gathered up the reins as if about to mount the buckboard.
“I’ve got all the supplies an’ the mail, Mr. Springer,” he said, cheerfully, “an’ I can be startin’ at once.”
“I’ll drive Miss Stacey,” replied Springer, dryly.
Tex looked blank for a moment. Then Miss Stacey’s clear gray eyes seemed to embarrass him. A tinge of red came into his tanned cheek. “Tex, you can ride my horse home,” said the rancher.
“That wild stallion of yours!” expostulated the cowboy. “Now Mr. Springer. I shore am afraid of him.” This from the best horseman on the whole range!
Apparently the rancher took Tex seriously.
“He sure is wild, Tex, and I know you’re a poor hand with a horse. If he throws you, why you’ll have your own horse.” Miss Stacey turned away her eyes. There was a hint of a smile on her lips. Springer got in beside her and, taking the reins without another glance at his discomfited cowboys, he drove away.
A few weeks altered many things at Springer’s Ranch.
There was a marvelous change in the dress and deportment of cowboys off duty. There were some clean and happy and interested children. There was a rather taciturn and lonely young rancher who was given to thoughtful dreams and whose keen eyes watched the little adobe schoolhouse under the cottonwoods. And in Jane Stacey’s face a rich bloom and tan had begun to warm out the paleness. It was not often that Jane left the schoolhouse without meeting one of Springer’s cowboys. She met Tex most frequently and, according to Andy, that fact was because Tex was foreman and could send the boys off to the ends of the range. And this afternoon Jane encountered the foreman. He was clean-shaven, bright and eager, a superb figure. Tex had been lucky enough to have a gun with him one day when a rattlesnake frightened the school teacher and he had shot the reptile. Miss Stacey had leaned against him in her fright; she had been grateful; she had admired his wonderful skill with a gun and had murmured that a woman always would be safe with such a man. Thereafter Tex packed his gun unmindful of the ridicule of his rivals. “Miss Stacey, come, for a little ride, won’t you?” he asked, eagerly.