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"I expaict you'll like Wyoming, Miss Messiter; leastways I hope you will. There's a right smart of country here." His gaze went out of the open door to the vast sea of space that swam in the fine sunset light. "Yes, most folks that ain't plumb spoilt with city ways likes it." "Sure she'll like it. Y'u want to get a good, easy-riding hawss, Miss Messiter," advised Slim.
Scores of wiry, long-legged steers had drifted down the ridges or gulches that led to the canon; and many a cow, followed by its calf, had stumbled forward to the herd and apparently accepted the inevitable. But before Helen Messiter had well started out of the canyon's mouth the situation changed absolutely.
Into his eyes had crept a tense alertness, the shining watchfulness of the tiger ready for its spring. The cause of the change in the foreman of the Lazy D was a simple one, and on its face innocent enough. It was merely that a stranger had swung in casually at the gate of the short stable lane, and was due to meet Miss Messiter in about ten seconds. So far good enough.
The morning after his conversation with Miss Messiter, McWilliams was washing in the foreman's room when the triangle beat the call for breakfast, and he heard the cook's raucous "Come and get it." There was the usual stampede for the tent, and a minute later Mac flung back the flap and entered.
The man's brown hand brushed the mask from his eyes and he bowed with mocking deference. "Miss Messiter, allow me to introduce myself again Ned Bannister, train robber, rustler, kidnapper and general bad man. But I ain't told y'u the worst yet. I'm cousin to a sheepherder' and that's the lowest thing that walks." He limped forward a few steps and sat down.
Well, turn your wolf loose when y'u get to feelin' real devilish," jeered the undismayed one, strolling forward to assist Miss Messiter to alight. The mistress of the Lazy D had been aware of the byplay, but she had caught neither the words nor their import. She took the offered brown hand smilingly, for here again she looked into the frank eyes of the West, unafraid and steady.
I told him to-day that he owed his life to you, Miss Messiter." "I don't think you need have told him that Doctor," returned that young woman, not a little vexed at him, "especially since you have just been telling me that he owes it to Wyoming air and his own soundness of constitution."
"I should like right well to have the pictures of some of them." She glanced at him sharply, but he was gazing so innocently at the purple Shoshones in the distance that she could not give him the snub she thought he needed. "You are right. My name is Helen Messiter," she said, by way of stimulating a counter fund of information.
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