“Can she?”

At our fall round-up, Ajax’s question was answered.  Conspicuously Angela attached herself to Tomlinson-Thorpe, regardless of the gaping eyes and mouths of neighbours, Puritan to the backbone in everything except the stealing of unbranded calves.

Most unfortunately, Thorpe—­I think more kindly of him when I don’t give him his double-barrelled name—­was daily exhibiting those qualities which had carried him through scrums.  In a bar-room brawl with two pot-valiant cowboys, he had come out supremely “on top.”  They had jeered at his riding-breeches, at his bob-tailed cob, at his English accent, and Thorpe had suffered them gladly.  Then, quite suddenly, Angela’s name fell upon a silence.  As suddenly Thorpe seized both men, one in each hand, and brought their heads together with a crash which the barkeeper described afterwards as “splendiferous.”  With an amazing display of physical violence, he flung them apart, each falling in a crumpled heap of profanity upon the floor.

“Don’t fool with that feller,” was the verdict in the foothills.

The affair would have been of no consequence had not Jim been present when the row took place.  Jim might have played the beau role had he carried a pistol.  Admittedly he would have been licked in a fight with either cowboy singly.  Thorpe, so I was told, entreated Jim to keep the story from his wife.  Angela had it, with slight exaggeration, from the hero-worshipper’s lips within an hour.  “It brought her heart into her mouth, I tell you,” the simple fellow told Ajax, and later Ajax murmured to me:  “I wonder whether it struck Angela that Jim would have tackled both of ’em, if Thorpe had not interfered.”

A dozen trifles hardly worth recording emphasised the difference between Jim and his greatest pal.  Thorpe mastered the colt which had thrown Jim; Thorpe, when fresh meat was wanted, killed handsomely the fat buck missed by the over-eager James; Thorpe made a pretty profit over a hog deal at the psychological moment when poor Misterton allowed three Poland-China sows to escape through an improperly constructed fence!

Thorpe was a man.  Did Angela think of Jim as a mouse?

* * * * *

After the fall round-up, Ajax and I spent a month fishing in British Columbia.  When we got back to the ranch, one of the first to greet us happened to be Jim Misterton.  He looked so pale and thin that I thought for a moment his old enemy had attacked him.  However, he assured us that he was perfectly well, but unable to sleep properly.  We asked him to stay to supper, rather as a matter of form, for he had always refused our invitations unless Angela were included.  To our surprise he accepted.

“He’ll uncork himself after the second pipe,” said the sage Ajax.

He did.  And, oddly enough, our cousin’s photograph in Court dress moved him as it had moved his wife.

“Boys,” he said, “I’m the biggest fool that ever came to this burnt-up wilderness; and I’m a knave because I persuaded the sweetest girl in England to join me.”