Ward was surely an unusual type of young man. He did not seem to remember, the next morning, that there had been any outbreak of bottled emotions on his part the day before, or any ill-temper on the part of Billy Louise, or anything at all out of the ordinary. Billy Louise had prepared herself to apologize--in some roundabout manner which would effect a reconciliation without hurting her pride too much--and she was rather chagrined to discover that Ward seemed neither to expect or to want any apology.
"Sorry I gotta go, William," he volunteered whimsically soon after breakfast. "But I gotta dig. Say, Wilhemina, if I stay away long enough, will you come after me again?"
"A wise man," said Billy Louise evasively, "may do a foolish thing once, but only a fool does it twice."
"I don't believe it's the dog." Ward shook his head at her in mock meditation. "It wouldn't last overnight, if it was just the dog." He looked at her with the hidden smile. "Are you sure--"
"I'm sure you know how to pester a person!" The lips of Billy Louise twisted humorously. "Lots of things bother me, and you ought to help me out instead of making it worse." She walked beside him down to the corral where Rattler was waiting, saddled and bridled for the homeward journey.
"Well, tell a fellow what they are. Of course, if it's the dog--"
"Ward Warren, you're awful! It isn't the dog. Well, it is, but there are heaps of other things I want to know, that I don't know. And you don't seem to care about any single one of them."
Ward leaned up against the fence and tilted his hat to shade his eyes from the sun. "Name a few of them, William Louisa. Not even a brave young buckaroo can be expected to mind-read a girl. If he could--"
"Well, is it poison you use?" Billy Louise thought it best to change Ward's trend of thought immediately. "Last night it just came to me all at once that you must have found some poison besides strychnine--"
"Eh? Oh, I see!" He managed a rather provoking slur on the last word. "No, William." His eyes twinkled at her. "It isn't poison. What's the other thing you want to know?"
Billy Louise frowned, hesitated, and, accepting the rebuff, went on to the next question: "What went with Seabeck's cattle, and Marthy and Charlie's, and all the others that have disappeared? You don't seem to care at all that there seems to be rustling going on around here."
Ward gave her a quick look. His tone changed a bit: "I don't know that there is any. I never yet lived in a cow-country where there wasn't more or less talk of--rustling. You don't want to take gossip like that too seriously. Anything more?"