Page:Caroline Lockhart--The Fighting Shepherdess.djvu/328

 Bowers was not due at headquarters for several days, so as soon as Kate found the leisure she set out to take his mail to him, anticipating with some enjoyment his con- fusion when he saw the extent of it. She came across him out in the hills, engaged in some occupation which so ab- sorbed him that he did not hear her until she was all but upon him.

" Oh, hello! " His face lighted up in pleased sur- prise when he saw her. " I was jest skinnin' out a ratde- snake for you."

"Were you, Bowers?" She looked at him oddly. " You are always doing something nice for me, aren't you?"

" This is the purtiest rattler I've seen this season," he declared with enthusiasm. ^* Look at the markin' on him. I thought it ud show up kind of nifty laid around the cantle of your saddle. A rattlesnake skin shore makes a purty trimmin to my notion. Don't know what he was doin' out of his hole so late in the season. He was so chilled I got him easy — an old ;feller — nine rattles and a button."

Kate got off her horse and sat down to watch him while Bowers enumerated the possibilities of snake skins as decorations.

" I brought your mail to you," she said when he had finished. — ** Letters."

" Now who could be writin' to me? " he demanded in feigned innocence.

" I'm curious myself, since there's a bushel," she an- swered dryly.

Bowers ^looked up at the bulging mail sack and colored furiously. Then he blurted out in desperate candor:

" I ain't honest, but I won't lie — I been advertisir'."

"What for?"