Part 23 (2/2)
It was I that now hesitated.
”Not to a strange girl, anyway!” said she. ”Well, now I have good news to tell you. You would not have given me any shock if you had said you knew about poor Nate, for that's the reason--Of course those things can't be secrets! Why, he's only twenty, sir! How should he know about this world? He hadn't learned the first little thing when he left home five years ago. And I am twenty-three--old enough to be Nate's grandmother, he's that young and thoughtless. He couldn't ever realize bad companions when they came around. See that!” She showed me a paper, taking it out like a precious thing, as indeed it was; for it was a pardon signed by Governor Barker. ”And the Governor has let me carry it to Nate myself. He won't know a thing about it till I tell him. The Governor was real kind, and we will never forget him. I reckon Nate must have a mustache by now?” said she to Lin.
”Yes,” Lin answered, gruffly, looking away from her, ”he has got a mustache all right.”
”He'll be glad to see you,” said I, for something to say.
”Of course he will! How many hours did you say we will be?” she asked Lin, turning from me again, for Mr. McLean had not been losing time. It was plain that between these two had arisen a freemasonry from which I was already shut out. Her woman's heart had answered his right impulse to tell her about her brother, and I had been found wanting!
So now she listened over again to the hours of stage jolting that ”we” had before us, and that lay between her and Nate. ”We would be four--herself, Lin, myself, and the boy Billy.” Was Billy the one at supper? Oh no; just Billy Lusk, of Laramie. ”He's a kid I'm taking up the country,” Lin explained. ”Ain't you most tuckered out?”
”Oh, me!” she confessed, with a laugh and a sigh.
There again! She had put aside my solicitude lightly, but was willing Lin should know her fatigue. Yet, fatigue and all, she would not sleep in the agent's room. At sight of it and the close quarters she drew back into the outer office, so prompted by that inner, unsuspected strictness she had shown me before.
”Come out!” she cried, laughing. ”Indeed, I thank you. But I can't have you sleep on this hard floor out here. No politeness, now! Thank you ever so much. I'm used to roughing it pretty near as well as if I was--a cowboy!” And she glanced at Lin. ”They're calling forty-seven,” she added to the agent.
”That's me,” he said, coming out to the telegraph instrument. ”So you're one of us?”
”I didn't know forty-seven meant Separ,” said I. ”How in the world do you know that?”
”I didn't. I heard forty-seven, forty-seven, forty-seven, start and go right along, so I guessed they wanted him, and he couldn't hear them from his room.”
”Can yu' do astronomy and Spanish too?” inquired the proud and smiling McLean.
”Why, it's nothing! I've been day operator back home. Why is a deputy coming through on a special engine?”
”Please don't say it out loud!” quavered the agent, as the machine clicked its news.
”Yu' needn't be scared of a girl,” said Lin. ”Another sheriff! So they're not quit bothering us yet.”
However, this meddling was not the company's, but the county's; a sheriff sent to arrest, on a charge of murder, a man named Trampas, said to be at the Sand Hill Ranch. That was near Rawhide, two stations beyond, and the engine might not stop at Separ, even to water. So here was no molesting of Separ's liberties.
”All the same,” Lin said, for pistols now and then still sounded at the corrals, ”the boys'll not understand that till it's explained, and they may act wayward first. I'd feel easier if you slept here,” he urged to the girl. But she would not. ”Well, then, we must rustle some other private place for you. How's the section-house?”
”Rank,” said the agent, ”since those Italians used it. The pump engineer has been scouring, but he's scared to bunk there yet himself.”
”Too bad you couldn't try my plan of a freight-car!” said I.
”An empty?” she cried. ”Is there a clean one?”
”You've sure never done that?” Lin burst out.
”So you're scandalized,” said she, punis.h.i.+ng him instantly. ”I reckon it does take a decent girl to shock you.” And while she stood laughing at him with robust irony, poor Lin began to stammer that he meant no offence. ”Why, to be sure you didn't!” said she. ”But I do enjoy you real thoroughly.”
”Well, m'm,” protested the wincing cow-puncher, driven back to addressing her as ”ma'am,” ”we ain't used--”
”Don't tangle yourself up worse, Mr. McLean. No more am I 'used.' I have never slept in an empty in my life. And why is that? Just because I've never had to. And there's the difference between you boys and us. You do lots of things you don't like, and tell us. And we put up with lots of things we don't like, but we never let you find out. I know you meant no offense,” she continued, heartily, softening towards her crushed protector, ”because you're a gentleman. And lands! I'm not complaining about an empty. That will be rich--if I can have the door shut.”
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