“Very well. Blue-Bo he is, then.... And he's a wonderful darling horse. Oh, Nell, just look at him.... Tom, I can't thank you enough.”
“Reckon I don't want any thanks,” drawled the cowboy. “But see heah, Bo, you shore got to live up to conditions before you ride him.”
“What!” exclaimed Bo, who was startled by his slow, cool, meaning tone, of voice.
Helen delighted in looking at Las Vegas then. He had never appeared to better advantage. So cool, careless, and assured! He seemed master of a situation in which his terms must be accepted. Yet he might have been actuated by a cowboy motive beyond the power of Helen to divine.
“Bo Rayner,” drawled Las Vegas, “thet blue mustang will be yours, an' you can ride him—when you're MRS. TOM CARMICHAEL!”
Never had he spoken a softer, more drawling speech, nor gazed at Bo more mildly. Roy seemed thunderstruck. Helen endeavored heroically to restrain her delicious, bursting glee. Bo's wide eyes stared at her lover—darkened—dilated. Suddenly she left the mustang to confront the cowboy where he lounged on the porch steps.
“Do you mean that?” she cried.
“Shore do.”
“Bah! It's only a magnificent bluff,” she retorted. “You're only in fun. It's your—your darned nerve!”
“Why, Bo,” began Las Vegas, reproachfully. “You shore know I'm not the four-flusher kind. Never got away with a bluff in my life! An' I'm jest in daid earnest aboot this heah.”