ith care and proceeded to
business. What he had to do he did with energy. It is safe to say
that at least one of those present can still vividly remember this and
testify to his thoroughness.

Mac drifted in after the disciplining. As foreman it was fitting that
he should be discreetly ignorant of what had occurred, but he could not
help saying:

"That y'u I heard singing, Reddy? Seems to me y'u had ought to take
that voice into grand opera. The way y'u straddle them high notes is
a caution for fair. What was it y'u was singing? Sounded like 'Would I
were far from here, love.'"

"Y'u go to hell," choked Reddy, rushing past him from the bunkhouse.

McWilliams looked round innocently. "I judge some of y'u boys must
a-been teasing Reddy from his manner. Seemed like he didn't want to sit
down and talk."

"I shouldn't wonder but he'll hold his conversations standing for a day
or two," returned Missou gravely.

At the end of the laugh that greeted this Mac replied:

"Well, y'u boys want to be gentle with him." "He's so plumb tender now
that I reckon he'll get along without any more treatment in that line
from us," drawled Frisco.

Mac departed laughing. He had an engagement that recurred daily in the
dusk of the evening, and he was always careful to be on time. The other
party to the engagement met him at the kitchen door and fell with him
into the trail that led to Lee Ming's laundry.

"What made you late?" she asked.

"I'm not late, honey. I seem late because you're so anxious," he
explained.

"I'm not," protested Nora indignantly. "If you think you're the only man
on the place, Jim McWilliams."

"Sho! Hold your hawsses a minute, Nora, darling. A spinster like y'u--"

"You think you're awful funny--writing in my autograph album that a
spinster's best friend is her powder box. I like Mr. Halliday's ways
better. He's a perfect gentleman."

"I ain't got a word to say against Denver, even if he did write in your
book,

"'Sugar is sweet,
The sky is blue,
Grass is green
And so are you.'

I reckon, being a perfect gentleman, he meant--"

"You know very well you wrote that in yourself and pretended it was Mr.
Halliday, signing his name and everything. It wasn't a bit nice of you."

"Now do I look like a forger?" he wanted to know with innocence on his
cherubic face.

"Anyway you know it was mean. Mr. Halliday wouldn't do such a thing. You
take your arm down and keep it where it belong