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Updated: June 10, 2025
As handsome and as gentle a lady was Miss Woppit as ever walked a white pine floor so very different from White River Ann, and Red Drake's wife, and old man Edgar's daughter, for they were magpies who chattered continually and maliciously, hating Miss Woppit because she wisely chose to have nothing to do with them.
Having now unbolted and unlatched and opened the door, Miss Woppit confessed that she was indeed alarmed; the pallor of her face confirmed that confession. Where was Jim? Had they caught the robbers? Was there actually no possibility of Jim's getting shot or stabbed or hurt?
She was simply a strange, lonely creature who had accepted valorously her duty to minister to the comfort of her brother; the circumstances of her wooing invested her name and her lot with a certain pleasing romance; she was a woman, she was loyal to her sense of duty, and she was, to a greater degree than most women, a martyr herein, perhaps, lay the secret to the fascination Miss Woppit had for Mary Lackington.
She accepted the commission gayly yet earnestly. She would seek Miss Woppit at once, and she would be so discreet in her tactics yes, she would be as artful as the most skilled diplomat at the court of love. Had she met Miss Woppit? Yes, and then again no.
They had surmised that Miss Woppit might be asleep, but, oh, no, not she. She was not the kind of sister to be sleeping when her brother was in possible danger. The answer to the firm but respectful knocking was immediate. "Who's there and what do you want?" asked Miss Woppit in tremulous tones, with her face close to the latch. There was no mistaking the poor thing's alarm.
Then they all looked upon Jim Woppit, but no one spoke. If words were to be said, it was Jim Woppit's place to say them, and that dreadful silence seemed to cry: "Speak out, Jim Woppit, for your last hour has come!" Jim Woppit was no coward. He stood erect before them all and plucked from his breast the star of his office and cast away from him the weapon he had worn.
She stood a way off, but she heard these words and they revealed much so very much to her more, perhaps, than you and I can guess. He did not speak her name. The boy seemed not to know that she was there. He said no other word, but with Jim Woppit bending over him and wailing that piteous "Willie, Willie, Willie," over and over again, the boy closed his eyes and was dead.
City Marshal," said Sir Charles, in atone that implied secrecy, "I have given it out that I shall leave the camp for home day after to-morrow." "Yes, I had heerd talk," answered Jim Woppit. "You are going by the stage." "Certainly, by the stage," said Sir Charles, "but not day after to-morrow; I go to-morrow." "To-morrow, sir?" "To-morrow," repeated Sir Charles.
I reckon she was right according to the way society looks at these things, but it was powerful hard on Three-fingered Hoover and Jake Dodsley and Barber Sam to be handicapped by etiquette when they had their bosoms chock full of love and were dying to tell the girl all about it. Jake Dodsley came a heap nearer than the others to letting Miss Woppit know what his exact feelings were.
It was a pretty but lonesome place, about three-quarters of a mile from the camp, adjoining the claim which Jim Woppit worked in a lazy sort of way Jim being fairly well fixed, having sold off a coal farm in Illinois just before he came west. In this little cabin abode Miss Woppit during the period of her wooing, a period covering, as I now recall, six or, may be, eight months.
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