“Nettie made for Wilbur, who was pushing back his hair with a weak but graceful sweep of the arm—­it had got down before his face like a portiere—­and I took Chet into a corner and tried to get some of the just wrath of God into his heart; but, my lands!  You’d have said he didn’t know there was such a thing as a girl in the whole Kulanche Valley.  He didn’t seem to hear me.  He talked other matters.

“‘Paw thinks,’ he says, ’that he might manage to take them hundred and fifty bull calves off your hands.’  ‘Oh, indeed!’ I says.  ’And does he think of buying ’em—­as is often done in the cattle business—­or is he merely aiming to do me a favour?’ I was that mad at the poor worm, but he never knew.  ’Why, now, paw says “You tell Maw Pettengill I might be willing to take ’em off her hands at fifty dollars a head,"’ he says.  ’I should think he might be,’ I says, ’but they ain’t bothering my hands the least little mite.  I like to have ’em on my hands at anything less than sixty a head,’ I says.  ‘Your pa,’ I went on, ’is the man that started this here safety-first cry.  Others may claim the honour, but it belongs solely to him.’  ‘He never said anything about that,’ says poor Chester.  ‘He just said you was going to be short of range this summer.’  ‘Be that all too true, as it may be,’ I says, ’but I still got my business faculties—­’ And I was going on some more, but just then I seen Nettie and Wilbur was awful thick over something he’d unwrapped from the other package he’d brought.  It was neither more nor less than a big photo of C. Wilbur Todd.  Yes, sir, he’d brought her one.

“’I think the artist has caught a bit of the real just there, if you know what I mean,’ says Wilbur, laying a pale thumb across the upper part of the horrible thing.

“‘I understand,’ says Nettie, ‘the real you was expressing itself.’

“‘Perhaps,’ concedes Wilbur kind of nobly.  ’I dare say he caught me in one of my rarer moods.  You don’t think it too idealized?’

“‘Don’t jest,’ says she, very pretty and severe.  And they both gazed spellbound.

“‘Chester,’ I says in low but venomous tones, ’you been hanging round that girl worse than Grant hung round Richmond, but you got to remember that Grant was more than a hanger.  He made moves, Chester, moves!  Do you get me?’

“‘About them calves,’ says Chester, ’pa told me it’s his honest opinion—­’

“Well, that was enough for once.  I busted up that party sudden and firm.

“‘It has meant much to me,’ says Wilbur at parting.

“‘I understand,’ says Nettie.

“‘When you come up to the ranch, Miss Nettie,’ says Chester, ’you want to ride over to the Lazy Eight, and see that there tame coyote I got.  It licks your hand like a dog.’