"I only lack three months of being eighteen," she came back indignantly.
"You don't say! You'll ce'tainly have to be advertising for a husband
soon, Miss Three-Quarters-Past-Seventeen. Maybe an ad in the Mesa paper
would help. You ain't so awful bad looking."
"I'll let you write it. What would you say?" she demanded, a patch of pink
standing out near the curve of the cheek bone.
He swung from the saddle and flung the reins to the ground. With jingling
spurs he came up the steps and sat on the top one, his back against a
pillar. Boldly his admiring eyes swept her.
"Nina, I couldn't do the subject justice. Honest, I haven't got the
vocabulary."
"Oh, you!" Laughter was in the eyes that studied him with a side tilt of
the chin. "That's a fine way to get out of it when your bluff is called."
He leaned back against the post comfortably and absorbed the beauty of the
western horizon. The sun had just set behind a saddle of the Galiuros in a
splash of splendor. All the colors of the rainbow fought for supremacy in
a brilliant-tinted sky that blazed above the fire-girt peaks. Soon dusk
would slip down over the land and tone the hues to a softer harmony. A
purple sea would flow over the hills, to be in turn displaced by a deep,
soft violet. Then night, that night of mystery and romance which
transforms the desert to a thing of incredible wonder!
"Did your father buy this sunset with the ranch? And has he got a
guarantee that it will perform every night?" he asked.
"Did you ever see anything like it?" she cried. "I have looked at them all
my life and I never get tired."
He laughed softly, his indolent, sleepy look on her. "Some things I would
never get tired of looking at either."
Without speaking she nodded, still absorbing the sunset.
"But it wouldn't be that kind of scenery," he added. "How tall are you,
muchacha?"
Her glance came around in surprise. "I don't know. About five foot five, I
think. Why?"
"I'm working on that ad. How would this do? 'Miss
Three-Quarters-Past-Seventeen wants to meet up with gentleman between
eighteen and forty-eight. Object, matrimony. Description of lady: Slim,
medium height, brunette, mop of blue-black hair, the prettiest dimple you
ever saw----'"
"Now I know you're making fun of me. I'm mad." And the dimple flashed into
being.