Jim Waring of Sonora-Town Part 45

"You got everything off of me but my watch," laughed Bud. "I reckon you'll let me keep that?"

"Is it a good watch?" she asked, and her eyes sparkled with a great idea.

"Tol'able. Cost a dollar. I lost my old watch in Criswell. I reckon the city marshal got it when I wa'n't lookin'."

"Well, you may keep it--for a while yet. When are you coming up to visit us?"

"Just as soon as I can, missy. Here's your daddy. I want to talk to him a minute."

Three weeks later, when the wheels of the local stage were beginning to throw a fine dust, instead of mud, as they whirred from St. Johns to Jason, Bud Shoop received a tiny flat package addressed in an unfamiliar hand. He laid it aside until he had read the mail. Then he opened it. In a nest of cotton batting gleamed a plain gold watch. A thin watch, reflecting something aristocratic in its well-proportioned simplicity.

As he examined it his genial face expressed a sort of childish wonderment. There was no card to show from where it had come. He opened the back of the case, and read a brief inscription.

"And the little lady would be sendin' this to me! And it's that slim and smooth; nothin' fancy, but a reg'lar thoroughbred, just like her."

He laid the watch carefully on his desk, and sat for a while gazing out of the window. It was the first time in his life that a woman had made him a present. Turning to replace the watch in the box, he saw something glitter in the cotton. He pulled out a layer of batting, and discovered a plain gold chain of strong, serviceable pattern.

That afternoon, as Bud came from luncheon at the hotel, a townsman accosted him in the street. During their chat the townsman commented upon the watch-chain. Bud drew the watch from his pocket and exhibited it proudly.

"Just a little present from a lady friend. And her name is inside the cover, along with mine."

"A lady friend, eh? Now, I thought it was politics mebby?"

"Nope. Strictly pussonel."

"Well, Bud, you want to watch out."

"If you're meanin' that for a joke," retorted Bud, "it's that kind of a joke what's foundered in its front laigs and can't do nothin' but walk around itself. I got the same almanac over to my office."

Chapter XXVI

_Idle Noon_

The occasional raw winds of spring softened to the warm calm of summer.

The horses had shed their winter coats, and grew sleek and fat on the lush gra.s.ses of the mesa. The mesa stream cleared from a ropy red to a sparkling thread of silver banked with vivid green. If infrequent thunderstorms left a haze in the canons, it soon vanished in the light air.

Bronson found it difficult to keep Dorothy from over-exerting herself.

They arose at daybreak and went to bed at dusk, save when Lorry came for an after-dinner chat or when he prevailed upon Dorothy to play for them in his cabin. On such occasions she would entertain them with old melodies played softly as they smoked and listened, the lamp unlighted and the door wide open to the stars.

One evening, when Dorothy had ceased to play for them, Lorry mentioned that he was to leave on the following day for an indefinite time. There had been some trouble about a new outfit that was grazing cattle far to the south. Shoop had already sent word to the foreman, who had ignored the message. Lorry had been deputized to see the man and have an understanding with him. The complaint had been brought to Shoop by one of the Apache police that some cowboys had been grazing stock and killing game on the Indian reservation.

Dorothy realized that Lorry might be away for some time. She would miss him. And that night she asked her father if she might not invite a girl friend up for the summer. They were established. And Dorothy was much stronger and able to attend to the housekeeping. Bronson was quite willing. He realized that he was busy most of the time, writing. He was not much of a companion except at the table. So Dorothy wrote to her friend, who was in Los Angeles and had already planned to drive East when the roads became pa.s.sable.

Lorry was roping the packs next morning when Dorothy appeared in her new silver-gray corduroy riding-habit--a surprise that she had kept for an occasion. She was proud of the well-tailored coat and breeches, the snug-fitting black boots, and the small, new Stetson. Her gray silk waist was brightened by a narrow four-in-hand of rich blue, and her tiny gauntlets of soft gray buckskin were st.i.tched with blue silk.

She looked like some slender, young exquisite who had stepped from the stage of an old play as she stood smoothing the fingers of her gloves and smiling across at Lorry. He said nothing, but stared at her. She was disappointed. She wanted him to tell her that he liked her new things, she had spent so much time and thought on them. But there he stood, the pack-rope slack in his hand, staring stupidly.

She nodded, and waved her hand.

"It's me," she called. "Good-morning!"

Lorry managed to stammer a greeting. He felt as though she were some strange person that looked like Dorothy, but like a new Dorothy of such exquisite att.i.tude and grace and so altogether charming that he could do nothing but wonder how the transformation had come about. He had always thought her pretty. But now she was more than that. She was alluring; she was the girl he loved from the brim of her gray Stetson to the toe of her tiny boot.

"Would you catch my pony for me?"

Lorry flushed. Of course she wanted Chinook. He swung up on Gray Leg and spurred across the mesa. His heart was pounding hard. He rode with a dash and a swing as he rounded up the ponies. As he caught up her horse he happened to think of his own faded s.h.i.+rt and overalls. He was wearing the essentially proper clothing for his work. For the first time he realized the potency of carefully chosen attire. As he rode back with the pastured pony trailing behind him, he felt peculiarly ashamed of himself for feeling ashamed of his clothing. Silently he saddled Chinook, accepted her thanks silently, and strode to his cabin. When he reappeared he was wearing a new s.h.i.+rt, his blue silk bandanna, and his silver-studded chaps. He would cache those chaps at his first camp out, and get them when he returned.

Bronson came to the doorway.

Dorothy put her finger to her lips. "Lorry is stunned, I think. Do I look as spiff as all that?"

"Like a slim young cavalier; very das.h.i.+ng and wonderful, Peter Pan."

"Not a bit like Dorothy?"

"Well, the least bit; but more like Peter Pan."

"I was getting tired of being just Dorothy. That was all very well when I wasn't able to ride and camp and do all sorts of adventures.

"And that isn't all," she continued. "I weigh twelve pounds more than I did last summer. Mr. Shoop weighed me on the store scales. I wanted to weigh him. He made an awful pun, but he wouldn't budge."

Bronson nodded. "I wouldn't ride farther than the Big Spring, Peter.

It's getting hot now."

"All right, daddy. I wish that horrid old story was finished. You never ride with me."

"You'll have some one to ride with you when Alice comes."

"Yes; but Alice is only a girl."

Bronson laughed, and she scolded him with her eyes. Just then Lorry appeared.

Bronson stooped and kissed her. "And don't ride too far," he cautioned.

Lorry drove the pack-animals toward Bronson's cabin. He dismounted to tighten the cinch on Chinook's saddle.

The little cavalcade moved out across the mesa. Dorothy rode behind the pack-animals, who knew their work too well to need a lead-rope. It was _her_ adventure. At the Big Spring, she would graciously allow Lorry to take charge of the expedition.

Lorry, riding behind her, turned as they entered the forest, and waved farewell to Bronson.

To ride the high trails of the Arizona hills is in itself an unadulterated joy. To ride these wooded uplands, eight thousand feet above the world, with a sprightly Peter Pan clad in silver-gray corduroys and chatting happily, is an enchantment. In such companions.h.i.+p, when the morning sunlight dapples the dun forest carpet with pools of gold, when vista after vista unfolds beneath the high arches of the rusty-brown giants of the woodlands; when somewhere above there is the open sky and the marching sun, the twilight underworld of the green-roofed caverns is a magic land.

The ponies plodded slowly upward, to turn and plod up the next angle of the trail, without loitering and without haste. When Dorothy checked her pony to gaze at some new vista, the pack-animals rested, waiting for the word to go on again. Lorry, awakened to a new charm in Dorothy, rode in a silence that needed no interpreter.

At a bend in the trail, Dorothy reined up. "Oh, I just noticed! You are wearing your chaps this morning."