CHAPTER FOUR

HAZEL WALTON

"Now there," said Riley Tyler, staring at the driver of a buckboard who was tying her team in front of the Rocky Mountain store, "now there is a girl that is pretty as a li'l red wagon, new-painted."

Billy Wingo, unmoved, continued to whittle the end of the packing case he was sharing with Tyler. He did not even look at the girl, and she was a very handsome girl.

"Yeah," said Billy Wingo.

"Not that I cotton to a female girl as a usual thing," resumed Riley, "ever since a experience I had when young. I'll tell you about it some time; maybe I better now."

"No, not now," Billy made haste to say; for he had heard the story of every single one of Tyler's love affairs at least a dozen times. "Le's talk about somethin' pleasant. Try the weather."

"You know, just for that," trundled on Riley Tyler, "we'll go on talking about young Hazel Walton over there. Pity she's gone in the store. You've never taken a good look at her, have you?"

"Nor I don't want to," denied Billy with what seemed to Riley an unnecessary heat.

"Why not? Do your eyes good. Tell you, Bill, she's got the best-looking black hair y'ever saw."

"I saw her once or twice with her uncle," Billy admitted desperately. "She's all you say she is and more too. Anything to please the children. Don't you ever stop talkin', Riley?"

"Not when I got somethin' like Hazel to talk about," declared the relentless Riley, warming to his subject. "Y'oughta notice her eyes once, Bill. Tell you, you never saw eyes till you see hers. They're eyes, they are! Big and black and soft and eyewinkers long as a pony's. Fact. And she ain't lost a tooth. She's still got the whole thirty-four. You take my word for it, Bill, she's a whole lot different from other folks."

"She's two teeth different anyway. Most generally all other folks can crowd in their mouth are thirty-two."

"What's a tooth more or less between friends?" said the unabashed Riley. "She's got a whole mouthful, and when she smiles she shows 'em all."

"That's great," yawned Billy, closing his pocket-knife with a click. "You forgot to say whether she's a good cook or not."

"She's a number one cook," Riley told him seriously. "Her coffee is coffee, lemme tell you, and she don't fry a steak to boot-leather neither. Not her. No. She broils it, she does. Y'oughta taste her mashed potatoes. No lumps in 'em or grit or nothin', only the mealy old potato; and butter beets! My Gawd!"

"Mixes 'em up with the potato, huh?"

"Of course not, you jack—separate. And canned peas—separate. Actually she cooks those peas so they're tender as fresh ones; tenderer, by gummy! Makes her own butter, too, in a churn."

"Well, well, in a churn. I never knew they made butter thataway."

"Shut up, Bill. You ain't got any soul. I stop at Walton's for a meal every chance I get. Y'oughta see her cookin' a meal, Bill. She rolls her sleeves up and she's got dimples in her elbows. She's a picture, and you can stick a pin in that."

"Why don't you marry the girl?"

"I've asked her," was the reply made without rancor. "She said, 'No thanks.'"

"That's one thing in her favor."

"Yeah, I think—Hey! what you tryin' to do, insult me?"

"Insult you, you tarrapin? You wouldn't know it if I did."

"If I wasn't so comfortable, I'd show you something," declared Riley Tyler, sliding farther down on the small of his long back. "But the heat has saved your life, William. Yeah, otherwise you'd be a corpse all bluggy in the middle of Main Street. I'm a wild wolf when I'm riled, you can gamble— Yonder she comes. She didn't stay long."

Billy dug the Tyler shortribs with a hard elbow. "Where's your manners? Go over and untie the lady's team."

"Too far. She'd have 'em untied by the time I got there. Besides, I'm too comfortable. Another thing, I'd have to get up. No, no, I'll stay here."

Hazel Walton stepped into the buckboard, kicked the brake-lever and swung her team like a workman. The tall near mule laid back his long ears and planted both hind feet on the dashboard. Smack! Smack! went the whip. The mule tucked his tail, shook his mean head and tried to jump through his collar. The brake-lever shot forward under the shove of the girl's straightened right leg. The sensible off mule threw his head to the left to ease the hard drag on his mouth as the girl swayed back on the near rein. The near mule, hearing the slither of the locked wheels behind him, and with his windpipe bent like a bow and his chin forced back to his chest, decided that fighting would avail him nothing and quieted at once.

"Regular driver, that girl," Billy said approvingly. "It ain't every woman can drive a pair of those big freight mules. I never knew she was like that."

"Lots of things you dunno," Riley hastened to say. "You didn't even know she was pretty."

Billy hopped across the sidewalk and ran out into the middle of Main Street. The mules, hard held, slid to a halt. Billy scooped up the package that had fallen from behind the seat and hurried up to the buckboard.

"Your tarp's slipped a little, ma'am," said he, stowing away the package without raising his eyes to Miss Walton, who was leaning over the back of the seat. "I'll tie it fast."

Not till the tarpaulin was fastened to his complete satisfaction did he look up. Then he realized that Riley Tyler had not told half the truth about Hazel Walton's eyes. True, they were big and black and soft, but they were deep too, deep as cool rock pools, and they looked at you steadily with a straight look that somehow made you wish that you had been a better boy.

Queer that he hadn't noticed this attribute before. But at none of the two or three times he had passed the girl on Golden Bar's Main Street had she impressed him in the least. He could not have described her to save his life. Perhaps it was because he had not looked into her eyes before to-day. But he wasted no time thinking about that. He kept right on looking into her eyes.

"You don't come in town very often," was his sufficiently inane observation.

"Not very often," said she, and smiled.

Yes, there were the teeth. And weren't they white! He didn't know when he had seen such white teeth. And her mouth had a dimple near one corner. Now the dimple was gone. He wished it would appear once more.