"Well, he'd ort to have somebody holdin' 'em fur him. I'll bet ye I'd want a hostler if I had the lookin' to do. Land's a mighty small thing an' hard to look at, sometimes; 'specially when a feller's head's in the clouds an' he's walkin' on air. Goin' northwest? Look out, they's a ha'nted house up there. But, by hen, I'd never see a ha'nt long's I had somethin' better to look at."
I saw Lettie turn quickly and disappear around the corner. My father was busy, so I sat in the office window and whistled and waited, watching the ponies switch lazily at the flies.
When we were clear of town, and the open plain swept by the summer breezes gave freedom from the heat, Marjie asked:
"Where is Lettie Conlow going on such a hot afternoon?"
"Nowhere, is she? She was talking to you at the courthouse."
"But she rushed away while Uncle Cam was joking, and I saw her cross the alley back of the courthouse on Tell's pony, and in a minute she was just flying up toward Cliff Street. She doesn't ride very well. I thought she was afraid of that pony. But she was making it go sailing out toward the bluff above town."
"Well, let her go, Marjie. She always wears on my nerves."
"Phil, she likes you, I know. Everybody knows."
"Well, I know and everybody knows that I never give her reason to. I wish she would listen to Tell. I thought when I first came home they were engaged."
"Before he went up to Wyandotte to work they were--he said so, anyhow."
Then we forgot Lettie. She wasn't necessary to us that day, for there were only two in our world.
[Illustration: "Baronet, I think we are marching straight into Hell's jaws"]
Out on the prairie trail a mile or more is the point where the bridle path leading to the river turns northwest, and passing over a sidling narrow way down the bluff, it follows the bottom lands upstream. As we passed this point we did not notice Tell Mapleson's black pony just making the top from the sidling bluff way, nor how quickly its rider wheeled and headed back again down beyond sight of the level prairie road. We had forgotten Lettie Conlow and everybody else.
The draw was the same old verdant ripple in the surface of the Plains. The grasses were fresh and green. Toward the river the cottonwoods were making a cool, shady way, delightfully refreshing in this summer sunshine.