AFTER that, among the men, it became a settled thing that, when Kay rode during the day, Tom McNair was to be her escort. It was tacit, but now and then some reckless spirit put it into words.
"If she's playin' with Tom she'd better look out."
And once even Jake came out with a statement which may or may not have been meant for Tom's ears.
"There's nothin' goin' to happen to that girl on this ranch," he said. "If Tom's a damned fool and don't know the way these eastern girls play around, then he'd better find out quick. She doesn't mean a thing by it."
But no one had the courage to repeat that to Tom.
He himself was in a curious state of mind. He was no fool, and he knew better far than Kay herself the gulf between them. At first it is possible that his vanity was pleased, his chivalry aroused, but later on there is no doubt that she began to make a'much more definite appeal.
"What about this fellow you're in love with?" he demanded once. He did not say "feller" any more. "What's he like?"
"I didn't say I was in love at all."
"Are you engaged to him?"
"No."
"Then there is somebody! I hope he gets lumps in his gizzard and chokes to death!"
It was when she looked at him quickly and then glanced away that he had his first inkling of the truth. It confounded him. He brooded over it, tried to laugh it off to himself, but a thousand and one little things began to bear it out. There was a button off his old leather coat one day, and she coaxed it from him and sewed it on. It was the first button she had ever sewed on in all her life, but he did not know that.
