Part 41 (1/2)
”How?”
”I don't know. The balloon and flying service use 'em, too. I've seen officers send them up. Probably it is to find out about upper air currents.”
”_Our_ flying service?”
”Yes, ma'am.”
”_Ballons d'essai_,” she nodded carelessly. But she was not yet entirely convinced regarding the theory she was pondering.
After lunch she continued to be very busy in the laundry for a time, but the memory of those three little balloons above the aspens troubled her.
Smith had gone on duty at the corral; Kid Glenn sauntered clanking into the bar and was there regaled with a _bock_ and a _tranche_.
”Monsieur Keed,” said Maryette, ”are any of our airmen in Sainte Lesse today?”
Glenn drained his gla.s.s and smacked his lips:
”No, ma'am,” he said.
”No balloonists, either?”
”I don't guess so, Maryette. We've got the Boche flyers scared stiff. They don't come over our first lines anymore, and our own people are out yonder.”
”Keed,” she said, winningly sweet, ”do you, in fact, love me a little--for Djack's sake?”
”Yes'm.”
”I borrow of you that automatic pistol. Yes?” She smiled at him engagingly.
”Sure. Anything you want! What's the trouble, Maryette?”
She shrugged her pretty shoulders:
”Nothing. It just came into my cowardly head that the path to the _lavoir_ is lonely at sundown. And there are new muleteers in Sainte Lesse. And I must wash my clothes.”
”I reckon,” he said gravely, unbuckling his weapon-filled holster and quietly strapping it around her shoulder with its pocketed belt of clips.
”You will not require it this afternoon?” she asked.
”No fear. You won't either. Them mule-whacking c.o.o.ns is white.”
She understood.
”Some men who seem whitest are blacker than any negro,” she remarked.
”_Eh, bien!_ I thank you, Keed, _mon ami_, for your complaisance. You are very amiable to submit to the whim of a silly girl who suddenly becomes afraid of her own shadow.”
Glenn grinned and glanced significantly at the cross dangling from her bosom: