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Coolidge's nickname, that the man with whom I was talking was the very one who had first bestowed it upon her, and he told me the secret truth about it. Mrs. Coolidge had no stancher friend than he, nor any who regarded her with greater respect and admiration, but he rarely spoke of her or addressed her by any other name than "Colonel Kate."
Writing home the day after his arrival he says: "I have obtained a place to board at friend Coolidge's at two dollars and twenty-five cents a week, and have taken for my studio a fine room in Broadway opposite Trinity Churchyard, for which I am to pay six dollars and fifty cents a week, being fifty cents less than I expected to pay."
So I passed the word down the line in our party that we 'd give the Governor a show let him have fair play anyhow, and, if he could make good, all right, the pot should be his. I was so tickled by Mrs. Coolidge's trick and the way she won out on it that I never called her anything but 'Colonel' after that, and, somehow, the title stuck. Anyway, she deserves it."
Only one explanation flashed into his mind to account for Miss Coolidge's unexpected announcement of an engagement between them this would excuse any future intimacy; would enable them to meet alone freely without arousing comment. She had deliberately chosen this course to disarm suspicion, and had failed to warn him in advance that she might test his nerve and discretion.
Coolidge's protests were broken off by Barbara's return. The girl stood before her father with her eyes on the floor and her face cold and impassive. She was dressed again in the garments she had worn when she first entered the house, three months before, and she seemed a far different creature from the happy and radiant girl to whom her lover had but just said good-bye.
Altogether, there was nothing about the visit which he could have characterized as painful from the point of view of the layman who accompanies the physician to a room where it is clear that the great transition is soon to take place. And yet there was everything about it to make it painful acutely painful to any man whose discernment was naturally as keen as Coolidge's.
Are you after the coin?" "What coin?" "Well, maybe a slice of old Coolidge's boodle. There's enough of it for all hands to have a dip. How does that hit you?" "Sounds interesting at least," admitted West, so earnestly as to attract the other's attention. "But let's talk it over among ourselves who is listening there?" Hobart glanced behind at the nearly closed door.
The fellow evidently disliked him instinctively, and would exert every influence possible to discredit him in the eyes of Natalie. The suggestion even came that this sudden call to charity might prove only an effort on Coolidge's part to get the girl alone where she could be plainly talked to.
Coolidge's enthusiasm over New Mexican history, and her admiration for the heroic times of the Conquistadores, had caused her to make the interior of her home almost a museum of antiquities. On the floors Navajo blankets fifty, a hundred, a hundred and fifty years old, and each one with its own dramatic tale served as rugs.
The one who seemed to be the leader rolled a cigarette and lighted it, and by the glare of the match she recognized him. He was a man of prominence in Santa Fé and the leader of the opposing party, not only locally but for the whole Territory as well. Mrs. Coolidge's first impulse was to awaken her husband, but a swift intuition warned her that that would not be wise.
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