“It’s always you who starts it,” he muttered at her.  “I’d be friends if you would.  What’s the good of spatting like two kids, anyway?”

“We’re really not kids any longer, are we?” she agreed demurely.  “I feel terribly grown up sometimes, don’t you?”

From which point they got along swimmingly for perhaps five minutes longer than it had ever been possible for them to talk together without “starting something.”  Elmer, very emphatic in his own mind concerning his matured status, yearned for her to understand it as he did.  With such purpose clearly before him . . . and before her, too, for that matter, since Miss Florrie had a keen little comprehension of her own . . . he spoke largely of himself and his blossoming plans.  He was a vaquero, to begin with; he had ridden fifty miles yesterday on range business; he was making money; he was putting part of that money away in Mr. Engle’s bank.  There was a little ranch on the rim of Engle’s big holding which belonged to an old half-breed; Elmer meant to acquire it himself one of these days.  And before so very long, too.  Mr. Engle had been approached and was looking into it, might be persuaded to advance the couple of thousand dollars for the property, taking as security a mortgage until Elmer could have squared for it.  Then Black Bill would begin stocking his place, a cow now, a horse, another cow, and so on.

He had launched himself valiantly into his tale.  But at a certain point he began to swallow and catch at his words and smoke fast between sentences.  He had located a dandy spot for a house . . . the jolliest little spring of cold water you ever saw . . . a knoll with big trees upon it.

“We’ll make up a party with Virginia and Norton some day and ride out there,” he said abruptly.  “I . . .  I’d like to have you see it, Fluff.”

She was tremulously delighted.  She sensed the nearest thing to an out-and-out proposal which had ever sung in her ears.  She leaned forward eagerly, her hands clasped to keep them from trembling.  She was sixteen, he eighteen . . . and she had his assurance of a moment ago that they were no longer just “kids.”  And then and there their so-long-delayed quarrel began.  Just at the wrong time, after the time-honored fashion of quarrels.  He was ready to twine the vine about the veranda posts of the house on the knoll where the spring and the big trees were, she was ready to plant the fig-tree.  Then she had glimpsed something just too funny for anything in the idea of Elmer raising pigs . . . for he had gone on to that, sagely anticipating a high market another season . . . and she laughed at him and all unintentionally wounded his feelings.  In a flash he was Black Bill again and on his mettle, ready with the quick retort stung from him; and she, parrying his thrust, was at once Fluff, the mercuric.  The spat was on . . . they would call it a spat to-morrow if to-morrow were kind to them . . . and Elmer’s ranch and house and cow, horse and pigs were laughed to scorn.