Bucky O'Connor: A Tale of the Unfenced Border by William MacLeod Raine (iphone ebook reader .TXT) 📕

“And when?”

“Well, I had been thinking now was a right good time.”

“It can't be too soon for me,” she flashed back, sweeping him with proud, indignant eyes.

“But I ain't so sure. I rather think I'd better wait.”

“No, no! Let us have it done with once and for all.”

He relapsed into a serene, abstracted silence.

“Aren't you going to speak?” she flamed.

“I've decided to wait.”

“Well, I haven't. Ask me this minute, sir, to marry you.”

“Ce'tainly, if you cayn't wait. Miss Mackenzie, will you—”

“No, sir, I won't—not if you were the last man on earth,” she interrupted hotly, whipping herself into a genuine rage. “I never was so insulted in my life. It would be ridiculous if it weren't so—so outrageous. You EXPECT, do you? And it isn't conceit, but a deep-seated certainty you can't get away from.”

He had her fairly. “Then you DID read the letter.”

“Yes, sir, I read it—and for sheer, unmatched impudence I have never seen its like.”

“Now, I wish you would tell me what you REALLY think,” he drawled.

Not being able, for reasons equestrian, to stamp her foot, she gave her bronco the spur.

When Collins again found conversation practicable, the Rocking Chair, a white adobe huddle in the moonlight, lay peacefully beneath them in the alley.

“It's a right quaint old ranch, and it's seen a heap of rough-and-tumble life in its day. If those old adobe bricks could tell stories, I expect they could put some of these romances out of business.” Miss Mackenzie's covert glance questioned suspiciously what this diversion might mean.

“All this country's interesting. Take Tucson now that burg is loaded to the roofs with live stories. It's an all-right business town, too—the best in the territory,” he continued patriotically. “She ain't so great as Douglas on ore or as Phoenix on lungers, but when it comes, to the git-up-and-git hustle, she's there rounding up the trade from early morn till dine.”

He was still expatiating in a monologue with grave enthusiasm on the town of his choice, when they came to the pasture fence of the ranch.

“Some folks don't like it—call it adobe-town, and say it's full of greasers. Everybody to his taste, I say. Little old Tucson is good enough for me.”

She gave a queer little laugh as he talked. She had put a taboo on his love story herself, but she resented the perfectly unmoved good humor with which he seemed to be accepting her verdict. She made up her mind to punish him, but he gave her no chance. As he helped her to dismount, he said:

“I'll take the horses round to the stable, Miss Mackenzie. Probably I won't see you again before I leave, but I'm hoping to meet you again in Tucson one of these days. Good-by.”

She nodded a curt good-by and passed into the house. She was vexed and indignant, but had too strong a sense of humor not to enjoy a joke even when it was against herself.

“I forgot to ask him whether he loves me or Tucson more, and as one of the subjects seems to be closed I'll probably never find out,” she told herself, but with a queer little tug of pain in her laughter.

Next moment she was in the arms of her father.