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Ann coiled it, and although it did not have the "feel" of the fine hemp, or the good hair rope that is part of the cowman's equipment, her hands and arm tingled to lassoo some active, running object. She coiled it once more and then flung the rope at a bush. The little girls shouted their appreciation. Ann did not mind, for there seemed to be no juniors or seniors there to see.
"He's gone to find that cowman's child, young lady, and take her home to her mother," Tom replied, with dignity. He rode on. She followed, presently gaining his side. "Is there such a man as Mark Thorn?" she asked after a little, looking across at Lassiter with sly innuendo. "No, there ain't no man by that name, but there's a devil in the shape of a human man called that," he answered.
As he stooped to pick it up a slow smile crept over the cowman's lips, a smile which expressed polite amusement along with a measured contempt and the boss herder was stung with a nameless shame at the false play. "Put up them guns, you dam' gawky fools!" he yelled in a frenzy of rage. "Put 'em up, I say. This man ain't goin' to eat ye!"
Late in the afternoon when she was working the animals in the corral, it seldom happened that one of Lost Chief's riders was not perched on the buck fence, watching her and criticizing her and always assuring her, with the cowman's pessimism toward the outer world, that she had no chance of winning a prize.
"But he was not none of them were my own people, my own dear companions." The little cloud had settled down again. It was Bruno who recalled the three of them to the period of contemporary history. Polley the cowman's first duty in the morning was to let Bruno loose for a run. He arrived panting and breathless, and evidently offended at not having been included in the escapade.
Of northern Montana in the days when it was cowman's paradise; the days when round-up wagons started out with the grass greening the hilltops, and swung from the Rockies to the Bear Paws and beyond in the wide arc that would cover their range; of the days of the Cross L and the Rocking R and the Lazy Eight, every one of them brand names to glisten the eyes of old-time Montanans.
It was the northern cowman's first visit to the Lone Star State, and he naturally felt impatient to see the cattle which he expected to buy. But the host made no movement to show the stock until patience ceased to be a virtue, when Captain Stone moved an adjournment of the social session and politely asked to be shown a sample of the country's cattle.
Here was a trodden place where a horse had been tied to a tree. Here was the broken end of a lariat. Here had been a little bivouac, a bed scraped up of the scanty fallen leaves and bunches of taller grass. Here were broken bushes broken, how? There was the fire, now sunken into a heap of ashes, a long, large, white heap, very large for a cowman's camp fire. And there And there was it!
On returning to the house, the two found Knowles and Gowan in the parlor with the ladies. Isobel had already introduced them to Mrs. Blake and also to her son. That young man was sprawled, face up, in the cowman's big hands, crowing and valiantly clutching at his bristly mustache. Gowan sat across from him, perfectly at ease in the presence of the city lady.
"Reckon I'll do what?" queried Pete. "Let The Spider or anybody like him run a whizzer on me after I run a good hoss ragged to git here with his doggone letter and then git stuck up like I was a hoss-thief? You got another guess, uncle." The old cowman's eyes twinkled. "You speak right out in meetin', don't you, son?" His drawl was easy and somehow reminded Pete of Pop Annersley.
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