She deliberately did as he bid her. The suspense was unbearable to them.
"You've heard us all now?" said Jack. "What do you say?"
Jack stared. "Another? Who? Oh, the cook! He ain't one of us. He ain't got nothing but the shirt on his back!"
Bela shrugged. "You say you want mak' all fair. Let me hear what he got say."
Here was an unexpected turn to the situation. They glowered at her with increasing suspicion and anger. Was it possible there was a dark horse in the race?
"If you want him, I guess you can say so right out, can't you?" growled Jack.
Bela tossed her head. "I not want him," she said quickly. "I jus' want hear what he got say."
It was difficult for them to think of the despised grub-rider in the light of a rival, so they decided it was just a freak of coquettishness in Bela.
"All right," said Jack. "Anything to oblige." Turning, he opened the door and shouted for Sam.
Sam presently appeared, tousled and flushed with sleep, his blue eyes scornfully resentful.
"What do you want now?" he demanded. "You made me lose sleep last night."
"Well," said Jack, "all that is over. We're askin' Bela here to choose between us and settle the thing for good. We've all said our say, but she allowed she wanted to hear what the cook had to offer before she closed. Speak up."
Sam was efficaciously startled into wakefulness. He became very pale, and fixed Bela with a kind of angry glare. It seemed to him like a horrible burlesque of something sacred. He hated her for allowing it. He did not reflect that she might not have been able to prevent it. She did not look at him.
"Do I understand right?" he said stiffly. "You're all proposing to her in a body?"
"That's right," said Jack. "And out of goodness of heart she gives you a chance, too."
Sam's jaw snapped together, and his mouth became a hard line.
"Much obliged," he said. "I resign my chance. I'm not looking for a wife." He went back into the house.
It was not what the other men expected to hear. Suspecting an insult to the object of their own desires, they turned on him angrily. They would never have allowed him to have her, but neither should he turn her down.
"And a good thing for you, too!" cried Joe.
"By George, I've a good mind to thrash him for that!" muttered Jack.