The Best Western Novels of William MacLeod Raine. William MacLeod Raine
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of her diversion, she dropped his hand. “You don't say I do it well,” she charged, aware suspiciously, at last, of his grave silence.
“You do it very well indeed. I didn't think you had it in you, kid. What's worrying me is that I can never live up to such a sure enough gipsy as you.”
“All you have to do is to look sour and frown if anybody gets too familiar with me. You can do that, can't you?”
“You bet I can,” he answered promptly, with unnecessary emphasis.
“And look handsome,” she teased.
“Oh, that will be easy for me—since you are going to make me up. As a simple child of nature I'm no ornament to the scenery, but art's a heap improving sometimes.”
She thought, but did not say, that art would go a long way before it could show anything more pleasing than this rider of the plains. It was not alone his face, with the likable blue eyes that could say so many things in a minute, but the gallant ease of his bearing. Such a springy lightness, such sinewy grace of undulating muscle, were rare even on the frontier. She had once heard Webb Mackenzie say of him that he could whip his weight in wildcats, and it was easy of belief after seeing how surely he was master of the dynamic power in him. It is the emergency that sifts men, and she had seen him rise to several with a readiness that showed the stuff in him.
That evening they slipped out unobserved in the dusk, and a few minutes later a young gipsy and his bride presented themselves at the inn to be put up. The scowling young Romany was particular, considering that he spent most nights in the open, with a sky for a roof. So the master of the inn thought when he rejected on one pretense or another the first two rooms that were shown him. He wanted two rooms, and they must connect. Had the innkeeper such apartments? The innkeeper had, but he would very much like to see the price in advance if he was going to turn over to guests of such light baggage the best accommodations in the house. This being satisfactorily arranged, the young gipsies were left to themselves in the room they had rented.
The first thing that the man did when they were alone was to roll a cigarette, which operation he finished deftly with one hand, while the other swept a match in a circular motion along his trousers leg. In very fair English the Spanish gipsy said: “You ce'tainly ought to learn to smoke, kid. Honest, it's more comfort than a wife.”
“How do you know, since you are not married?” she asked archly.
“I been noticing some of my poor unfortunate friends,” he grinned.
Chapter 7.
In the Land of Revolutions
The knock that sounded on the door was neither gentle nor apologetic. It sounded as if somebody had flung a baseball bat at it.
O'Connor smiled, remembering that soft tap of yore. “I reckon—” he was beginning, when the door opened to admit a visitor.
This proved to be a huge, red-haired Irishman, with a face that served just now merely as a setting for an irresistible smile. The owner of the flaming head looked round in surprise on the pair of Romanies and began an immediate apology to which a sudden blush served as accompaniment.
“Beg pardon. I didn't know. The damned dago told me—” He stopped in confusion, with a scrape and a bow to the lady.
“Sir, I demand an explanation of this most unwarrantable intrusion,” spoke the ranger haughtily, in his best Spanish.
A patter of soft foreign vowels flowed from the stranger's embarrassment.
“You durned old hawss-stealing greaser, cayn't you talk English?” drawled the gipsy, with a grin.
The other's mouth fell open with astonishment He stared at the slim, dusky young Spaniard for an instant before he fell upon him and began to pound his body with jovial fists.
“You would, would you, you old pie-eating fraud! Try to fool your Uncle Mick and make him think you a greaser, would you? I'll learn yez to play horse with a fullgrown, able-bodied white man.” He punctuated his points with short-arm jolts that Bucky laughingly parried.
“Before ladies, Mick! Haven't you forgot your manners, Red-haid?”
Swiftly Mr. O'Halloran came to flushed rigidity. “Madam, I must still be apologizing. The surprise of meeting me friend went to me head, I shouldn't wonder.”
Bucky doubled up with apparent mirth. “Get into the other room, Curly, and get your other togs on,” he ordered. “Can't you see that Mick is going to fall in love with you if he sees you a minute longer, you young rascal? Hike!”
“Don't you talk that way to a lady, Bucky,” warned O'Halloran, again blushing vividly, after she had disappeared into the next room. “And I want to let yez have it right off the bat that if you've been leading that little Mexican senorita into trouble you've got a quarrel on with Mike O'Halloran.”
“Keep your shirt on, old fire-eater. Who told you I was wronging her any?”
“Are you married to her?”
“You bet I ain't. You see, Mick, that handsome lady you're going to lick the stuffing out of me about is only a plumb ornery sassy young boy, after all.”
“No!” denied Mick, his eyes two excited interrogation-points. “You can't stuff me with any such fairy-tale, me lad.”
“All right. Wait and see,” suggested the ranger easily. “Have a smoke while you're falling out of love.”
“You young limb, I want you to tell me all about it this very minute, before I punch holes in yez.”
Bucky lit his cigar, leaned back, and began to tell the story of Frank Hardman and the knife-thrower. Only one thing he omitted to tell, and that was the conviction that had come home to him a few moments ago that his little comrade was no boy, but a woman. O'Halloran was a chivalrous Irishman, a daredevil of an adventurer, with a pure love of freedom that might very likely in the end bring him to face a row of loaded carbines with his back to a wall, but Bucky had his reticencies that even loyal friendship could not break down. This girl's secret he meant to guard until such time as she chose of her own free will to tell it.
Frank returned just as he finished the tale of the knife episode, and Mick's frank open eyes accused him of idiocy for ever having supposed that this lad was a woman. Why, he was a little fellow not over fifteen—not a day past fifteen, he would swear to that. He was, to be sure, a slender, girlish young fellow, a good deal of a sissy by the look of him, but none the less a sure enough boy. Convinced of this, the big Irishman dismissed him promptly from his thoughts and devoted himself to Bucky.
“And what are yez doing down in greaser land? Thought you was rustling cows for a living somewheres in sunburnt Arizona,” he grinned amiably.
“Me? Oh, I came down on business. We'll talk about that presently. How's your one-hawss revolution getting along, Reddy? I hope it's right peart and healthy.”
O'Halloran's eyes flashed a warning, with the slightest nod in the world toward the boy.
“Don't worry about him. He's straight as a string and knows how to keep his mouth shut. You can tell him anything you would me.” He turned to the boy sitting quietly in an inconspicuous corner. “Mum's the word, Frank. You understand that, of course?”
The boy nodded. “I'll go into the next room, if you like.”
“It isn't necessary. Fire ahead, Mike.”
The latter got up, tiptoed to each door in turn, flung it suddenly open to see that nobody was spying behind it, and then turned the lock. “I have use for me head for another year or two, and it's just as well to see that nobody is spying. You understand, Bucky, that I'm risking me life in telling you what I'm going to. If you have any doubts about this lad—” He stopped, keen eyes fixed on