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Leander stood on the outermost fringe of Eudora’s potential partners. He would not have dared to maintain it openly, yet he was sure the pretty minx had promised that dance to him. "Dance with Leander, dear, and don’t let those men begin quarrelling. I’ve something to tell you, presently," said Judith. Texas Tyler stood glowering at them from the doorway.
Twenty-four hours after a thing happened it would be safe to assume that every cow and sheep outfit in a radius of three hundred miles would be discussing it over their camp-fires; and this long before there was an inch of telegraph wire or a railroad tire in the country. Hawks had merely reserved the news for Eudora’s private ear because he hoped thus to gain an advantage over his three rivals.
"Wait till you-uns has children of your own," sniffed her mother, from the assured position of maternal experience, "an’ see the infant that’s allowed to suck its thumb has the makin’s in him of a felon or a unfortunit." She rocked a slow accompaniment to her dismal, prophecy. Eudora’s eyes, big with wonder, were fixed on the crouching flank of a distant mountain. Her mother broke the silence.
Eudora’s accent was but faintly reminiscent of her mother’s strong Smoky Mountain dialect, as a crude feature is sometimes softened in the second generation. It was not unpleasing on her full, rosy mouth. The girl had the seductiveness of her half-sister, Judith, without a hint of Judith’s spiritual quality.
Judith’s half-sister, Eudora, was making a pretty quarrel by perversely forgetting the order in which she had given her dances. The girl was so undeniably happy that Judith dreaded the grim news she must tell her. Eudora blushed as she encountered Judith’s eye. Her half-sister ever offered a check on Eudora’s exuberant coquetry, with its precipitation of discussions that often ended in bullets.
And thus it came to pass that Eudora’s suitors, swathed in aprons, meekly washed dishes shoulder to shoulder, while their souls craved the performance of valorous deeds. As this was the last stage station on the way to Lost Trail, Mary Carmichael was perforce obliged to content herself till Mrs. Yellett should call or send for her.
Not once that evening had they rested on his wife or any member of his family. He had shown no interest in any of the small happenings of home, the frank rivalry of Eudora’s suitors, the bickerings of the girls and boys over the division of household labor. The one thing that had momentarily aroused his somnolent intelligence was a revival of his wife’s plaint anent the unbuilt bird-house.
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