“Don’t you want to go, Nancy?” she said as she went through the kitchen.
“No,” returned Nancy briskly, “I don’t care for riding as you do, and this morning I would not go for anything. Christina is going to teach me how to make bread.” The exploration of strange forests and dizzy mountainsides was nothing to Nancy, compared with the excitement of cooking something new.
To saddle Buck was now a less difficult affair than at first, for his mistress had learned to fling the object of his hatred upon him and then stand back, giving adroit jerks at the cinch between his kicks and plunges. When he had got his fill of bucking he would turn his white face to her as if to say, “That is all for to-day; now let’s be off.”
Her expedition was doomed to delay, however, for, as she was leading her pony around the corner of the house, she came upon a visitor, a total stranger, standing on the doorstep. He was apparently annoyed at finding no doorbell and having his knock go unheard. He shuffled his feet, coughed, and rapped smartly on the door again and again, as though he were a person of such importance that he could not afford to be kept waiting. Beatrice realized suddenly how used she had become to Ely’s conventional costume of flannel shirt and high boots, since this dapper newcomer, with his pointed shoes and tight, high-waisted coat looked not only uncomfortable, but absurd.
“Good morning, Miss Deems. Beautiful day, is it not?” began the stranger easily. “Mills is my name, Dabney Mills of the Brownsville, Montana ‘Evening Star.’ My paper has sent me here, or rather I volunteered to come, to investigate this unfortunate affair going on in Broken Bow Valley.”
“Oh, you mean the strike?” Beatrice asked, rather bewildered and not knowing at all why the overdressed Mr. Mills should have sought out their remote cabin.
He made a movement as though to go in, but, since Beatrice seemed not at all inclined to open the door, he sat down on the step with smooth assurance, laid his hat on the stone, and took out a note-book.
“The affair is more like a lockout than a strike, but not exactly that, either,” he continued with that irresistible fluency of speech adopted by people who talk a great deal to unwilling listeners. “As I understand it, the situation is this. The Broken Bow Irrigation Co. undertakes to construct the necessary dams, ditches, and sluice-gates to water this dry valley, a big project in which a certain John Herrick, resident of these parts, has large interests.”