"You've got quite a lot of hay put up, I see," Billy Louise remarked, when they were leaving.
"Sure. I told you I've been working." Ward's tone was cheerful to the point of exuberance. He felt as though he could work day and night now, with the memory of Billy Louise's lips upon his own.
"You never put up that hay alone," she told him bluntly, "and you needn't try to make me believe you did. I know better."
"How do you know?" Ward glanced over his shoulder at the stack, then humorously at her. He recognized the futility of trying to fool Billy Louise, but he was in the mood to tease her.
"Humph! I've helped stack hay myself, if you please. I can tell a one-man stack when I see it. Who did you get to help? Junkins?"
"No, a half-baked hobo I ran across. I had him here a month."
"Oh! Are those your horses down there? They can't be." Last April, Billy Louise had been very well informed as to Ward's resources. She was evidently trying to match her knowledge of their well-defined limitations with what she saw now of prosperity in its first stages.
"They are, though. A dandy span of mares. I got a bargain there."
Billy Louise pondered a minute. "Ward, you aren't going into debt, are you?" Her tone was anxious. "It's so beastly hard to get out, once you're in!"
"I don't owe anybody a red cent, William Louisa. Honest."
"Well, but--" Billy Louise looked at him from under puckered brows.
Ward laughed oddly. "I've been working, William. Last spring I--hunted wolves for awhile; old ones and dens. They'd killed a couple of calves for me, and I got out after them. I--made good at it; the bounty counts up pretty fast, you know."
"Yes-s, it does." Billy Louise bit her lips thoughtfully, turned and looked back at the haystack, at the long line of new, wire fence, and at the two heavy-set mares feeding contentedly along the creek. "There must be money in wolves," she remarked evenly.
"There is. At least, I made good money hunting them." The smile was hiding behind Ward's lips again and threatening to come boldly to the surface. "They haven't bothered you any, I hope?"
"No," said Billy Louise, "they haven't. I guess they must be all up your way."
For the life of him Ward could not tell to a certainty whether there was sarcasm in her tone or whether she spoke in perfect innocence. The shrewdest of us deceive ourselves sometimes. Ward might have known he could not fool Billy Louise, who had careworn experience of the cost of ranch improvements and could figure almost the exact number of wolf-bounties it would take to pay for what he had put into his claim. Still, he was right in thinking she would not quiz him beyond a certain point. She seemed to have reached that point quite suddenly, for she did not say another word about Ward's affairs.