His apparent innocence had completely fooled the Happy Family, you will remember. They had called him Mamma's Little Lamb and had composed poetry and horrific personal history for his benefit. The few years had not changed him. His hair was still yellow and curly. The dimples still dodged into his cheeks unexpectedly; he was still much like a stick of dynamite wrapped in white tissue and tied with a ribbon. He looked an angel of innocence, and in reality he was a little devil.
Andy introduced him, and Pink bowed and had all the appearance of blushing--though you will have to ask Pink how he managed to create that optical illusion. "What did you want?" he asked in his soft, girlish voice, turning to Andy bashfully. But from the corner of his eye Pink saw that a little smile of remembrance had come to soften Miss Hallman's angry features, and that the other girl was smiling also. Pink hated that attitude of pleasant patronage which women were so apt to take toward him, but for the present it suited his purpose to encourage it.
"Pink, what time was it when we went to bed last night?"
Andy asked him in the tone of one who wished to eliminate all doubt of his virtue.
"Why--it was pretty early. We didn't light the lamp at all, you remember. You went to bed before I did--we couldn't see the cards--" He stopped confusedly, and again he gave the two women the impression that he blushed. "We weren't playing for money," he hurriedly explained. "Just for pastime. It's--pretty lonesome--sometimes."
"Somebody did something to somebody last night," Andy informed Pink with a resentful impatience. "Miss Hallman thinks we're the guilty parties--me in particular, because she don't like me. It's something about some shacks--damaging property, she called it. Just what was it you said was done, Miss Hallman?" He turned his honest, gray eyes toward her and met her suspicious look steadily.
Miss Hallman bit her lip. She had been perfectly sure of the guilt of Andy Green, and of the others who were his friends.
Now, in spite of all reason she was not so sure. And there had been nothing more tangible than two pairs of innocent-looking eyes and the irreproachable manners of two men to change her conviction.
"Well, I naturally took it for granted that you did it," she weakened. "The shacks were moved off eighties that you have filed upon, Mr. Green. Mr. Owens told me this morning that you men came by his place and threatened him yesterday, and ordered him to move. No one else would have any object in molesting him or the others." Her voice hardened again as her mind dwelt upon the circumstances. "It must have been you!" she finished sharply.
Whereupon Pink gave her a distressed look that made Miss Hallman flush unmistakably. "I'm just about distracted, this morning," she apologized. "I took it upon myself to see these settlers through--and everybody makes it just as hard as possible for me. Why should all you fellows treat us the way you do? We--"
"Why, we aren't doing a thing!" Pink protested diffidently.
"We thought we'd take up some claims and go to ranching for ourselves, when we got discharged from the Flying U. We didn't mean any harm--everybody's taking up claims. We've bought some cattle and we're going to try and get ahead, like other folks. We--I wanted to cut out all this wildness--"
"Are those your cattle up on the hill? Some men shipped in four carloads of young stock, yesterday, to Dry Lake. They drove them out here intending to turn them on the range, and a couple of men--"
"Four men," Miss Allen corrected with a furtive twinkle in her eyes.
"Some men refused to let them cross that big coulee back there. They drove the cattle back toward Dry Lake, and told Mr. Simmons and Mr. Chase and some others that they shouldn't come on this bench back here at all. That was another thing I wanted to see you men about."
"Maybe they were going to mix their stock up with ours," Pink ventured mildly.
"Your men shot, and shot, and shot--the atmosphere up there is shot so full of holes that the wind just whistles through!" Miss Allen informed then gravely, with her eyebrows all puckered together and the furtive little twinkle in her eyes. "And they yelled so that we could hear them from the house! They made those poor cows and those poor, weenty calves just go trotting back across the coulee. My new book on farming says you positively must not hurry cattle. It--oh, it does something to the butter-fat--joggles it all up or something--I'll lend you the book. I found the chapter on Proper Treatment of Dairy Stock, and I watched those men with the book in my hands. Why, it was terribly unscientific, the way they drove those cow-critters!"
"I'll come over and get the book," Andy promised her, with a look in his eyes that displeased Miss Hallman very much.
"We're ashamed of our ignorance. We'd like to have you learn us what's in the book."
"I will. And every week--just think of that! I'm to get a real farm paper."
"I'd like to borrow the paper too," Andy declared instantly.
"Oh, and--what's going to be done about all those bullet-holes? They--they might create a draught--"
"We'll ride around that way and plug 'em up," Andy assured her solemnly. "Whenever you've got time to show me about where they're at."
"It will be a pleasure. I can tell where they are, but they're too high for me to reach. Wherever the wind whistles there's a hole in the atmosphere. And there are places where the air just quivers, so you can see it. That is the shock those bold, bad men gave it with the words they used. They--used--words, Mr. Green! If we could scheme some way to pull out all those wrinkles--I do love a nice, clean, smooth atmosphere where I live. It's so wrinkly--"
"I'll attend to all that, right away."
Miss Hallman decided that she had nothing further to say to Mr. Green. She wheeled her horse rather abruptly and rode off with a curt goodbye. Miss Allen, being new at the business of handling a horse, took more time in pulling her mount around.