Part 9 (1/2)
Mary smiled just enough to make the dimples count. They were best of the dimple family--not fat dimples, but little spots you'd like to own.
She wasn't the girl to take gaiety from a stranger; but, somehow, Jim showed for what he was--a clean heart, if frolicsome.
Mary was a match for him, all right. She made him as deep a bow, gave him a look, and in a mock-earnest way, with her hand on her heart, said:
”Am I to suppose myself the cause of so much joy?”
”You're not to suppose--you're to know,” says Jim.
”Well,” says Mary, with another flying look at him, ”it doesn't seem possible; but the evidence of such very truthful and very blue, blue eyes”--she stopped and looked at the eyes--”is, of course, beyond questioning.”
That knocked Jimmy. Underneath his dash, he was a modest fellow, and to have his personal appearance remarked openly rattled him. Mary'd got the war on his territory in two seconds. He looked at her, dumb; until, seeing her holding back her laughter by means of a row of the whitest of teeth set into the most interesting of under lips, he laughed right out and offered his hand.
”I'll simply state in plain English,” he says, not wanting to quit whipped, ”that you are the best use those eyes have ever been put to.”
”That's entirely satisfactory,” says Mary. ”I'd have a bad disposition not to be contented with that--and, Mr. Holton, here's a friend of mine--Mr. Saxton.”
Saxton was the only one who hadn't drawn entertainment out of the previous performance. He and Holton shook hands without smiles. It was more like the hand-shake before ”time” is called. But they looked each other square in the eye--honest enemies, at least--not like the durned brute--well, he comes later.
There they stood; fine, graceful, upstanding huskies, both; each as handsome as the other, in his own way; each as able as the other, in his own way; one black and poetic-looking; the other fair and romantic-looking. You pays your money and you takes your choice. Sax knew more of books; Jim knew more of men. Sax knew the wild lands of music and such; Jim had slept with an Injun or two watching out to be sure he wasn't late for the office the next morning. Either one was plenty durn good enough to make a girl fix her hair straight.
And there stood Mary, the cause of the look each man put upon the other.
She'd brought down Jim in one stroke--he was a sudden sort of jigger.
Well, there she stood; and if there's anything in having a subject worth fighting for, those two fellers ought to have been the happiest of men.
I'm glad I can add this: Mary didn't _want_ any man to fight about her--not much! She was the real, true woman; the kind that brings hope in her hand. Of course she had some vanity, and if two fellows got a little cross when she was around, that wouldn't break her heart; but to arouse any deep feeling of anger between two men--why, I honestly believe she'd rather they'd strike her than each other. Oh, no! She stood for nothing of that kind. She stood heart and soul for light and fun and kindness. If she made mistakes, it was from a natural underrating of how the other party felt, or, like her worst mistake, through some twisted idea of duty. There's a saying that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and that's particularly true of women.
When a good woman gets hold of half a fact, she can raise the very devil with it.
That two felt disposed to glare put restraint on conversation, and after some talk, in which Jim fished for an invitation to call on Mary in Panama, and got what you might call a limited order--”I shall be very glad to see you, sometime, Mr. Holton”--he turned and treated me to a view of Western methods.
”Pack your turkey and come with me, Bill,” he says.
”What--_now_?” says I.
”Well, I'll wait, if you want me to,” he says. ”But what's your reason?”
”Not any,” says I, and skipped for my truck. Isn't it surprising how people, even boys, that ain't much troubled about fixed rules, will keep on going the same old way; not because there's sense, comfort, nor profit in it, but simply because it is the same old way? I've known folks to live in places and keep at jobs, hating both, could quit easily, yet staying on and on, simply because they were there yesterday.
I've got so that if people start talking over an act, I feel like saying, ”For Heaven's sake! Let's try it and then we'll _know_,” while at the same time it happens that their talk is so good, I feel bashful about cutting in. Give me the Western idea. People that get an action on, instead of an oration. That is, if they're the right kind of people.
Yet I dearly love to talk. It's a strange world!
Jimmy was the Western idea on two legs. The moment he thought of a thing, he grew busy. And when work was over, I'd talk him against any man I ever met. Perhaps the chief difference between the Western man's way and the Eastern man's way is that the Westerner says it's fun and believes it, whilst the Easterner says it's a great and holy undertaking he's employed in, and wastes lots of time trying to believe it. We all do the things we like to do, and we might as well admit it, cheerful.
I hadn't much more than time to say good-by all around, and find out where Sax and Mary were going to stay, before I was off on the new deal.
”Have you ever ridden a horse?” Jim asks me, when we hit sh.o.r.e.
”Never,” says I.
”Well,” says he, rubbing his head, ”we _can_ go across on the railroad, but I'd like to stop here and there. It wouldn't be so bad if the good critters hadn't been all hired out or bought this last rush. As it is, you stand to get on to something that don't want you. My Pedro'd eat you alive if you laid a hand on him, or I'd trade with you--you got to learn sometime, Bill, but you'll get a tough first lesson here--suppose we take the train, eh?”