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Tully said, with innocent pride in the gift with which his daughter had been honored. "Who said that?" Ruth Mary asked. "Why, Mr. Kirkwood said it. He's the boss one of the whole lot to my thinkin'. He's got that way with him some folks has! We had some real good talks, evenings, down on the rocks under the old bridge, I told him about you and Enselman" "Father, I wish you hadn't done that."
"I've made a wish," shouted Tommy; "I've wished Joe Enselman would bring me an Injun pony: a good one that won't buck!" "You must keep your wish for the next trip. This ship is freighted deep enough already. Off she goes then, and good luck to the wish," said Kirkwood, as the current took the boat, with the light at its peak burning clearly, and swept it away.
Before her blush had faded, Kirkwood had dismissed the subject of Ruth Mary's engagement, with the careless reflection that Enselman was probably not the right man, but that the primitive laws which decide such haphazard unions doubtless provided the necessary hardihood of temperament wherewith to meet their exigencies.
Tully went down to the camp at Moor's Bridge to build the engineers' boat. The women were now alone at the ranch, but Joe Enselman's return was daily expected. Mr. Tully, always cheerful, had been confident that he would be home by the 5th. The 5th of November and the 10th passed, but Enselman had not returned.
There seemed no other way out of her trouble. The next morning, before she was dressed, Enselman rode away, and her father went with him. She was alone, now, in the midst of the hills she loved alone as she would never be again. She foresaw that she would not have the strength to lay that last blow upon her faithful old friend, the crushing blow that perfect truth demanded.
"If Joe Enselman was here," he said, "I bet he could ketch more fish in half 'n hour, with a pole like this o' mine and a han'ful o' 'hoppers, than any of you can in a whole week o' fishing with them fancy things." "Oh, Tommy!" Ruth Mary expostulated, looking distressed. "Who is this famous fisherman?" Kirkwood asked, smiling at Tommy's boast. "Oh, he's a feller I know.
He was more sure than ever that Enselman was not the right man. At supper Ruth Mary waited on the strangers in silence, while Angy kept the cats and dogs "corraled," as her father called it, in the shed, that their impetuous appetites might not disturb the feast. Mr. Tully stood in the doorway and talked with his guests while they ate, and Mrs.
It was not long before she followed her father into the house. No one was surprised to see her white and tremulous. She seemed to know where Enselman sat without raising her eyes; neither did he venture to look at her, as she came to him, and stooping forward, laid her little cold hands on his. "I'm glad you've come back," she said.
He withdrew them at once, but not before he saw the troubled blush that reddened the girl's averted face. It struck him, though he was not deeply versed in blushes, that it was not quite the expression of happy, maidenly consciousness, when the name of a lover is unexpectedly spoken. It was the first time in her life that Ruth Mary had ever blushed at the name of Joe Enselman.
On the 12th, in the midst of a heavy fall of snow, his pack animals were driven in by another man, a stranger to the women at the ranch, who said that Enselman had changed his mind suddenly about coming home that fall, and decided to go to Montana and "prove up" on his ranch there. Mr. Tully's work was finished before the second week of December.
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