at petty revenge is unwomanly besides giving evidence of a narrow
mind and shallow, and if Weary could show a good and sufficient reason
for staying away like that when there were matters to be settled
between them, she would not be petty and mean about it; she would be
divine--and forgive.

PART THREE

Weary was standing pensively by the door, debating with himself the
advisability of going boldly over and claiming the first waltz with the
schoolma'am--and taking a chance on being refused--when Cal Emmett gave
him a vicious poke in the ribs by way of securing his attention.

"Do yuh see that bunch uh red loco over there by the organ?" he wanted
to know. "That's Bert Rogers' cousin from Iowa."

Weary looked and wilted against the wall. "Oh, Mamma!" he gasped.

"Ain't she a peach? There'll be more than one pair uh hands go into
the air to-night. It's a good thing Len got the drop on me first or
I'd be making seven kinds of a fool uh myself, chances is. Bert says
she's bad medicine--a man-killer from away back.

"Say, she's giving us the bad-eye. Don't rubber like that, Weary; it
ain't good manners, and besides; the schoolma'am's getting fighty, if
I'm any judge."

Weary pulled himself together and tried to look away, but a pair of
long blue eyes with heavy white lids drew him hypnotically across the
room. He did not want to go; he did not mean to go, but the first he
knew he was standing before her and she was smiling up at him just as
she used to do. And an evil spell seemed to fall upon Weary, so that
he thought one set of thoughts while his lips uttered sentences quite
apart from his wishes. He was telling her, for instance, that he was
glad to see her; and he was not glad. He was wishing the train which
brought her to Montana had jumped the track and gone over a high
cut-bank, somewhere.

She continued to smile up at him, and she called him Will and held out
her hand. When, squirming inward protest, he took it, she laid her
left hand upon his and somehow made him feel as if he were in a trap.
Her left hand was soft and plump and cool, and it was covered with
rings that gave flashes and sparkles of light when she moved, and her
nails were manicured to a degree not often seen in Dry Lake. She drew
her fingers caressingly over his hand and spoke to him in _italics_, in
the way that had made many a man lose his head and say things extremely
foolish. Her name was Myrtle Forsyth, as Weary had ca