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That man Heckshill, who was so mighty perlite that night, wrote to me afterwards that he didn't know my name till he'd seed that paragraph, and he wanted to know ef, ez a 'well-known citizen, I could recommend him some timber lands. I recommended him half o' my own quarter section, and he took it. He's puttin' up a mill thar, and that's another reason why we want peace and quietness up thar.
How this common backwoodsman had set him in his place as easily as SHE had evaded the advances of the journalist and Heckshill! They had taught him a lesson; perhaps even the sending back of his handkerchief was part of it! His heart grew heavy; he walked to the window and gazed out with a long sigh.
It had the singular effect of startling the party into a vague and uneasy consciousness of indiscretion, as if it had been the voice of the outer world of law and order, and their manner again became constrained. The leave-taking was hurried and perfunctory; the diplomatic Heckshill again lapsed into glittering generalities about "the best of friends parting."
Brice bit his lip and walked on silently, at which she cast a sidelong glance under her widely spaced heavy lashes and said demurely, "I thought last night it was mighty good for you to stand up for your frien' Yuba Bill, and then, after ye knew who I was, to let the folks see you kinder cottoned to me too. Not in the style o' that land-grabber Heckshill, nor that peart newspaper man, neither.
Heckshill, and that might have accounted for the cautious reticence of the one and the comfortable moralizing of the other. The old woman cast an uneasy glance on the fair giggler, but replied to Frenshaw: "That's it!
The ice thus broken, or perhaps thus perilously skated over, the passengers were as profuse in their thanks and apologies as they had been constrained and artificial before. Heckshill and Frenshaw vied with each other for a glance from the audacious Flo. If their compliments partook of an extravagance that was at times ironical, the girl was evidently not deceived by it, but replied in kind.
Heckshill, who felt the responsibility of his late airy introduction of the party, to boldly keep up his role, with an equally non-committal, light-hearted philosophy. "Well, ma'am," he said, addressing his hostess, "it's a queer world, and no man's got sabe enough to say what's the rights and wrongs o' anything.
Heckshill had the reputation, in his earlier career, of "taking" such things as unoccupied lands and timber "as he found them," without much reference to their actual owners. Apparently he was acting upon the same principle now, as he reached for the demijohn of whiskey with the ingenuous pleasantry, "Did somebody say whiskey, or did I dream it?" But this did not satisfy Frenshaw.
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