None the less Johnnie was distressed.  He believed that his friend was concealing an aching heart beneath all this attention to impending details.  As a Benedict he considered it his duty to help the rest of the world get married too.  A bachelor was a boob.  He didn’t know what was best for him.  Same way with a girl.  Clay was fond of Miss Beatrice, and she thought a heap of him.  You couldn’t fool Johnnie.  No, sirree!  Well, then?

Mooning on the sad plight of these two friends who were too coy or too perverse to know what was best for them, Johnnie suddenly slapped himself a whack on the thigh.  A brilliant idea had flashed into his cranium.  It proceeded to grow until he was like to burst with it.

When Lindsay rose from breakfast he was mysteriously beckoned into another room.  Johnnie outlined sketchily and with a good deal of hesitation what he had in mind.  Clay’s eyes danced with that spark of mischief his friends had learned to recognize as a danger signal.

“You’re some sure-enough wizard, Johnnie,” he admitted.  “I expect you’re right about girls not knowin’ their own minds.  You’ve had more experience with women than I have.  If you say the proper thing to do is to abduct Miss Whitford and take her with us, why—­”

“That’s whatever.  She likes you a heap more than she lets on to you.  O’ course it would be different if I wasn’t married, but Kitty she can chaperoon Miss Beatrice.  It’ll be all accordin’ to Hoyle.”

The cattleman gazed at the puncher admiringly.  “Don’t rush me off my feet, old-timer,” he said gayly.  “Gimme a coupla hours to think of it, and I’ll let you know what I’ll do.  This is real sudden, Johnnie.  You must ‘a’ been a terror with the ladies when you was a bachelor.  Me, I never kidnaped one before.”

“Onct in a while you got to play like you’re gonna treat ’em rough,” said Mr. Green sagely, blushing a trifle nevertheless.

“All right.  I’ll let you engineer this if I can make up my mind to it after I’ve milled it over.  I can see you know what you’re doin’.”

When Johnnie returned from a telephone call at the office two hours later, Kitty had a suspicion he was up to something.  He bubbled mystery so palpably that her curiosity was piqued.  But the puncher for once was silent as a clam.  He did not intend to get Kitty into trouble if his plan miscarried.  Moreover, he had an intuition that if she knew what was under way she would put her small, competent foot through the middle of the project.

The conspirators arranged details.  Johnnie was the brains of the kidnaping.  Clay bought the tickets and was to take charge of the prisoner after the train was reached.  They decided it would be best to get a stateroom for the girl.

“We wantta make it as easy as we can for her,” said Johnnie.  “O’ course it’s all for her own good, but we don’t figure to treat her noways but like the princess she is.”