Stamford raised his eyes from the wobbling wheels to the seat of the buckboard. Instantly he felt, rather than saw, that it was the Professor and his sister. Beside him Mary Aikens was puzzled, with a nervous mingling of surprise and amusement. With the instinct of her sex her hand went to her dark hair, and a quick eye fell to the spotless apron and moved on to her neatly clad feet.
When the buckboard was near enough to make out the Professor's extended hands on the lines, his fierce concentration on the horses' ears, his braced feet, and the threatening bounce of his body as the wheel mounted the ridge, the spectators in the ranch-house could not control their laughter. For the sake of politeness Mary temporarily withdrew.
With several stentorian and anxious "whoas" the buckboard came to a stop at the end of the gravel walk, and Isabel Bulkeley, with a sigh of relief, bounded out.
"Amos," she announced, "hereafter I drive."
The Professor, an amusing figure of mingled satisfaction and relief, protested.
"Now I think I did that rather well. Take the exact end of the walk and the centre of the buggy—I'm not more than a yard or two out. It's that left horse that dislikes me. I feel as if I must expend myself on that line—and the other horse responds too. When I get time I'm going to invent a separate line for each horse—if only for the use of amateurs. As it is now, if one horse is of a contrary disposition——"
He had leaped over the wheel and was diving a hand into a box in the back of the buckboard, rummaging among bits of rock.
"Isabel! Isabel Bulkeley! Where's that Allosaurus vertebra? Oh—yes, here it is. Goodness, how it frightened me!" He raised his head and beamed on them through his large spectacles. "Do you know, I don't believe I've lost a thing—except confidence in my driving."
An enormous handkerchief emerged from his coat pocket and mopped his forehead. The hand that held the lines gripped them so firmly that the horses were backing on him.
"Whoa!" he shouted, pulling harder. "Mr.—Mr. Stamford, will you give to this equine problem the touch I seem to lack? If you don't, I'm going to drop these flimsy bits of leather and take the brutes in my arms.
"Some day," he went on, when Stamford had taken the reins, "I hope posterity will unearth the bones of that brute on the left—and grind them to dust. Yes, I do. Sometimes I can be really blood-thirsty. But," he grinned, "I wouldn't be surprised if they found mine at the same time, with Gee-Gee—what funny names you give your horses!—with Gee-Gee sitting on my chest enjoying his last laugh."
Mary Aikens, her eyes brimming with tears, had rushed to meet Isabel with a hungry welcome that was pathetic, seizing her hand in both her own; and Isabel, after a moment of surprise she could not conceal, flushed a little and responded with moisture in her eyes. But the few moments of the Professor's dilemmas had served to conceal the little scene that recorded more of the story of Mary Aikens' lonely life than she would willingly have exposed.
They were standing now, hand in hand, laughing on the two men. To Mary it was enough that, for the first time, another woman was to cross the threshold of the H-Lazy Z. Isabel was still, Stamford thought, the fond sister who took as much amusement as anyone from her brother's artlessness.
She turned to her hostess. "This is not merely a flying visit, Mrs. Aikens. Amos—my brother—was dissatisfied with his searching down the river. We hoped you wouldn't mind letting us camp on your ranch here while he pokes about the banks."
Beside the buckboard Professor Bulkeley was making the same request of Cockney, who had come hurriedly up from the stables.
"The Double Bar-O—that is, I believe, the technical name—seems to have been unpopular among dying dinosaurs and their forbears. Whether one should infer from that that they avoided the locality as unhealthy, or found it so healthy they couldn't die there, does not appear in the evidence. All I found there we know as much about already as about last year's weather or the origin of mumps. The further I prodded west, the more promising the outlook. This bit of bone, for instance, is, I believe, of the Upper Jurassic period. The Double Bar-O region is by comparison disreputably modern—not earlier than the Miocene. This bone appears to be blood-cousin to a megalosaurus we received once from England. It has all the——"
"I'm not quite following you, Professor." Cockney was struggling to keep his face straight.
"No, no, of course not. I'm—I'm apt to forget there are people live in the nineteenth century. I suppose they have their purpose in the scheme of life—for our progeny of the five-hundredth century to worry about, perhaps."
As he was speaking he was pulling from the buckboard the canvas and poles of a tent.
"What's that?" asked Cockney, with a frown.
"Our tent. If we could pitch it somewhere along the bank of the river here——"
"You can pitch it into the river—and that's all."
"But we——"
Cockney kicked the canvas off the trail, drew a cigarette and match from his pockets, lit them in a leisurely way—and dropped both into the canvas. A second match he struck and calmly held to a loose corner. The cloth, dry and brittle in Alberta air, smouldered a moment, then burst into flame.
Stamford solemnly leaned over the blaze to fan it with his hand. Mary stood laughing. Isabel was divided between alarm and wonder. Only the Professor seemed undisturbed. He stood watching the growing blaze with interest.
"As a raw backwoodsman I would suggest starting the blaze on the side toward the wind."
Stamford followed the suggestion with success.
A heavy smoke rose and swirled about them, pungent and stifling. The Professor whiffed it once or twice and turned his back on it.
"Fancy, my dear, thinking of living in a tent that smells like that. I can't imagine any other form of fumigation being sufficient."
"Now," ordered Cockney, "take your suitcases into the house."
The Professor looked at him admiringly. "I wish I could express myself like that. Sometimes I find the language of the lecture-room not exactly suited to buying oatmeal or getting a tooth filled. He means, Isabel, that we must be his guests, in spite of ourselves. On him be the blame."
Cockney burst into a laugh that startled the horses.
"I don't see why you shouldn't find old bones about here, Professor. We seem to have pretty nearly everything else anyone wants. We've opened a sanitorium." He nodded at Stamford. "Might as well add a seminary. From to-day the H-Lazy Z ranks as a public institution."
There was nothing offensive in the tone, but about the laugh was a suggestion of recklessness.
"Of course," stammered the Professor, "I'd be delighted if—if——" He cleared his throat. "General—I mean, Inspector Barker warned me not to suggest it, but I feel I owe it to myself and to the professional nature of my visit to express the hope that—that if there's any consideration——"
"If you suggest such a thing again," interrupted Cockney, angrily looking the Professor up and down, "I'll carry you down and drop you in the river."
The Professor, retreating before the blaze of indignation, tripped over the board edging of the gravel walk and fell.
"I meant no offence," he stammered, where he lay. "It's only my Eastern ignorance, you know."
Cockney reached down and jerked him to his feet.
"Gad!" he exclaimed. "What a waste of muscle! You fellows with brains teeming with junk scorn the good things the Almighty has given you. Here's Stamford dying to have one little fibre of the sinew you ignore—and you thinking only of a lot of old bones that can't affect the price of cattle. Well, heigh-ho! Give me a month of you and I'll show you new things in life to glow over. You've the stature. Maybe you'll learn out here to use it."
The Professor turned to bow over Mary Aikens's hand, and she flushed with embarrassment and pleasure at the courtesy.
"Your husband has offered to share with me some of the fine things of life on the prairie," he said. "It is a prophecy of the scope he has, that I see before me the woman who shares that life with him."
Stamford recalled with a malicious twinkle a moment of intense chagrin in Inspector Barker's office.
"How ingenuous!" he murmured sweetly. "How simple and sweet and natural!"
The Professor's face went red. Isabel's eyes were dancing.
"I owe that to the Professor," Stamford explained to Cockney and Mary.
"One of the things I don't share is my wife," Cockney observed abruptly, and drove away with the buckboard.
Dinner—the night meal was dinner where Cockney gave the orders—was such a time of pleasant chatter and merry banter as the H-Lazy Z had never dreamed of, though there was a recurring element of constraint that puzzled Stamford. Cockney was a mass of varying moods, now laughing uproariously, now moody and watchful; and all the time Mary Aikens was rent by the conflicting emotions of delight, and of sensitiveness to her husband's humours. Afterwards Bean was dismissed, and the two women undertook the kitchen work. Cockney and Stamford smoked, the former the inevitable cigarette, the latter his short curved pipe. The Professor did not smoke; he seemed to have missed most of the habits of man. While the two others talked in the detached but perfectly satisfied periods of smokers, he drifted to the piano and turned over the music.
And presently, so softly and smoothly that no one seemed to know when he commenced, his fingers were moving over the keys to a quiet refrain he had picked up from the pile of music on the piano. When Stamford looked up, suddenly conscious of the melody of it, it was not the Professor he saw, but Mary Aikens standing in the doorway to the kitchen with the dish-towel in her hand, tears in her eyes. So close to the surface had the unexpected arrival of guests brought her emotions that she did not know she was showing them. Stamford heard Cockney draw a sharp breath, and the next instant his host stumbled up and went into the bedroom, closing the door behind him.
A gentle knock interrupted the Professor before he noticed the consternation his wandering fingers caused. The latch lifted and Dakota stepped inside, fumbling his hat, his hair oiled flat from a centre parting, and a pair of fluffy angora chaps held up by a belt several holes tighter than was his wont. He stood there, embarrassed, looking from one to another.
When the music ceased Cockney came from the bedroom. He laughed noisily when he saw Dakota.
"Come in, come in, Dakota. This is civilisation as the old H-Lazy Z never looked for it, eh? Guess you and I will have to take to our glad clothes to keep in line."
There were no introductions—that would have added to the embarrassment of the uncomfortable cowboy.
"'Dakota!'" repeated the Professor interrogatively. "Does it so happen that you come from my own country, the land of the free, where floats—but, ahem! this is not Decoration Day. I can see from the light in your eye that you understand. May I have the honour of shaking your hand?"
Dakota intruded no objections, though he grinned foolishly.
"Your parents little thought," rambled on the Professor, "that the name they gave you in the cradle would be your password the world over. With no offence to my host and hostess, and this eminently agreeable gentleman on my left, I feel that I can take you to my heart—or wherever people take their friends. I must see more of you, my countryman."
Though the flamboyancy of it was flagrant, and delivered with a twinkle, Dakota felt an inclination to expectorate, but bethought himself and coughed behind his hand.
"By the way, Mr.—ah—Dakota, now that I have you two residents together, I must take advantage of it. We have long known that the banks of the Red Deer River are replete with interest for the paleontologist. The region around the Double Bar-O was disappointing. Perhaps your acquaintance with the rocks about here will prepare me for what I will find."
"Looking for old bones, Dakota," explained Cockney, with a grin.
Dakota turned his eyes suspiciously from one to the other several times.
"Seen a few bits o' stone that might 'a' been bones once," he growled—"not such a lot o' them."
"You no doubt are as familiar as anyone with the banks hereabouts?" suggested the Professor.
"I shore oughta be. Seen every blessed foot on both sides for a matter of fifty miles or so a million times."
"Ah! And you've seen the fossils? Where, may I enquire?"
Dakota felt for a cigarette, found he had neglected to put them in his new clothes, and put a match between his lips instead.
"Seen a few to the east——"
"But I've covered the ground myself rather well in that direction. It's the west I'm most interested in. It was several hundred miles to the west, this side of the town of Red Deer, where my hated rivals of the American Museum of Natural History made their discoveries——"
"Not a da—I mean a durn thing to the west, mister," Dakota broke in firmly. "All I ever seen in that direction was within three miles, or at least four. Lots o' them down here just where the cliff starts, enough to keep you going a dozen summers."
"Do you mean you'd advise me not to go further west?"
"You'd be wasting time, that's all."
"Where are the fords—or the ferries—or however one crosses the river?"
Dakota glanced furtively up into the Professor's guileless face and looked across at Cockney before replying.
"Course there ain't no ferries. Never saw a blessed bone on the other side anyway."
"The only ford about here," volunteered Cockney, "is a mile or so to the east."
"West it's all canyon," added Dakota.
"By the way," asked Cockney, "do you ride any better than you drive?"
Professor Bulkeley shrugged his great shoulders.
"I regret to admit that it's not one of my few accomplishments."
"Not ride?" Dakota broke into a relieved laugh. "Then you don't need to worry about anything further away than four miles—you'll never get there. You can't drive over these prairies, you know. They ain't as smooth as they look. Wait till you've tried it."
"I have tried it," groaned the Professor feelingly.
"Dakota," said Isabel shyly, "I ride—only a little, I suppose, compared with your Western girls."
"I knew you did, miss," said Dakota gallantly. "I could tell from the cut o' you. But I bet"—he looked the Professor up and down with professional eye—"I bet I could have him riding in a week—only I ain't got time," he added hastily. "I know the shape when I see it. Now, the tenderfoot here"—Stamford squirmed—"he'll never make a rider. Ain't got the right-shaped legs, nor the body-swing. The minute I seed you——"
He became conscious of his unusual loquacity and stopped.
"If you'll teach me Western ways of riding. Dakota," smiled Isabel.
The cowboy grinned and rubbed his hand across his lips in sheer delight.
"Shore, miss." He looked up at the clock. "Is it too late now?"
"They're going to be with us for months, Dakota," laughed Mary Aikens. "We mustn't unfold all our pleasures the first day."
Dakota rose to go, started to stretch, bethought himself, and addressed Cockney.
"About them staples, Mr. Aikens. We can't do much more to the new corrals till we have 'em."
"I forgot them in town, Dakota. We'll have to send one of the boys in for them."
When Dakota was gone Cockney addressed the Professor.
"I wouldn't advise you to try to ford the river in that buckboard."
"I wouldn't advise me to try it without the buckboard," laughed the Professor. "A bath-tub of water gives me a panic. And I'd never feel satisfied if I didn't cover all the ground."
"If it wouldn't be too late then," said Cockney, "I'd let you find out by trying. It's safe enough if you know the trail, and the river isn't high. Better learn to ride."
The Professor glanced guiltily at his sister.
"Amos," she reminded him sternly, "you said you'd learn."
"Isabel," he replied, "I'm funking."
"Let me give you the recipe," said Stamford. "You take Hobbles—it must be Hobbles; she's used to it by now—you take Hobbles to where the ground's soft. You get one able-bodied cowboy to hold her head and another—you might need two—to lift you into the saddle. Close your eyes, breathe the quickest prayer you know ... and brush the dead grass off your clothes where you landed. The cowboys'll catch Hobbles. One little secret I haven't yet told anyone: sneak your feet from the stirrups while you're praying. It's far easier to fall then."
But the Professor shook his head stubbornly.
"It wouldn't be fair to the Institute to risk losing those old bones out there on the rocks by risking these bones. That, you see, is the comparative values of the products of the Mesozoic and the Quaternary periods. It may be a distortion, but it's my job."
"Then," declared Stamford firmly, "you're not going to save your bones and risk your sister, until we've tried the ford without her. I'm going with you myself."
"How ingenuous! How sim——"
Stamford raised a warning finger.
"Not that, Professor, not that! To date we're even. If you reopen the feud, I swear I'll have the last word, if I have to leave it set in type."
The Professor's eyes twinkled about the room.
"If my dead body is picked up among the cliffs, here's the murderer. I can't always be sure of having Isabel along to protect me."
"I'm afraid, Mr. Stamford," said Isabel, "he's grown rather dependent on me."
"Then he can't learn independence earlier," persisted Stamford.
"And he's going to need it some day," laughed Cockney. "There are other men, Miss Bulkeley."
"The necessity for concentration in a task like mine——" began the Professor.
"Doesn't excuse selfishness," Stamford filled in. "To-morrow I'll be your assistant. We'll risk our valueless lives together on that ford. The little man has spoken."
"Such a quaintly practical way of expressing his devotion to your sex, my dear!" said the Professor to his sister.