"Some dame!" he heard Bud mutter under his breath.
A moment later Lynch pulled up the snorting team and called Jessup to hold them. Buck was just turning away from a lightning appraisal of the new-comers, when, to his amazement, the young woman smiled at him from her seat.
"Why, Mr. Green!" she called out in surprise. "To think of finding you here!"
Buck stared at her, wide-eyed and bewildered. With her crisp, dark hair, fresh color, and regular features, she was very good to look at. But he had never consciously set eyes on her before in all his life!
Stratton's first feeling was that the girl must have made a mistake. In a dazed fashion he stepped forward and helped her out of the buckboard, but this was a more or less mechanical action and because she so evidently expected it. As he took her hand she pressed it warmly and did not at once relinquish it after she had reached the ground.
"I'm awfully glad to see you again," she said, her color heightened a little. "But how on earth do you come to be away off here?"
With an effort Buck pulled himself together. He could see that the men were regarding him curiously, and felt that he must say something.
"That's simple enough," he answered briefly. "I've got a job on this ranch."
She looked slightly puzzled. "Really? But I thought--I had no idea you knew--Mary."
"I didn't. I needed a job and drifted in here thinking I'd find a friend of mine who used to work on the same outfit in Texas. He was gone, but Miss Thorne took me on."
"You mean you're a regular cow-boy?" the girl asked in surprise. "Why, you never told me that aboard ship?"
A sudden chill swept over Stratton, and for a moment he was stricken speechless. Aboard ship! Was it possible that this girl had been part of that uncanny, vanished year, the very thought of which troubled and oppressed him. His glance desperately evaded her charming, questioning eyes and rested suddenly with a curious cool sense of relief on the face of Mary Thorne, who had come up unperceived from behind.
But as their eyes met Buck was conscious of an odd veiled expression in their clear depths which vaguely troubled him. It vanished quickly as Miss Thorne moved quickly forward to embrace her friend.