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When I see five or six boys now lying under a tree on the grass, and they fall silent as I pass them, I have no right to say that they are not arranging to go and carry some poor widow's winter wood into her shed and pile it neatly up for her, and wish to keep it a secret from everybody; but forty years ago I should have had good reason for thinking that they were debating how to tie a piece of her clothes-line along the ground so that when her orphan boy came out for an armload of wood after dark, he would trip on it and send his wood flying all over the yard.
It was all confusing enough to the big Westerner, but the little man knew where to go. He pressed forward to where a little, old, dried up "razorback" was regaling two of the workmen with words of experience if not wisdom. "'En I told Shako," he declared with emphasis, "that he never could win back old Mom's confidence, till he got a big armload of sugarcane en doled hit out to her.
Hetty set the strange object on a shelf and turned to the task of cleaning up. Johnny Culpepper, the ranch's other full-time hand and Hetty's assistant manager, drove the pickup into the yard just before noon. He parked in the shade of the huge cottonwood tree beside the house and bounced out with an armload of mail and newspapers.
De Launay came into the cabin the next morning with an armload of wood to find Solange sitting up in bed with the blankets clutched about her, staring at the unfamiliar surroundings. He smiled at her, and was delighted to be met with an answering, though somewhat puzzled smile. "You are better?" he asked. "Yes," she said. "And you brought me here?" He nodded and knelt to rebuild the fire.
He re-entered the house with an armload of sticks, and placed them carefully on the embers; stirred up the glowing mass with a poker; readjusted the fresh wood; provoked the red coals once more; and at last, having exhausted the dilatory possibilities of the fire, stood up clumsily to face the ordeal. "Well, Marion," he began awkwardly, "I'm in for it, I reckon."
Then he brought an armload of clean horse blankets from a closet. "These don't look like the nice white bed a little boy should have, Billy," he said, "but we'll make them do. This will beat a storebox all hollow." Billy took a long leap for the lounge. When he found it bounced, he proceeded to bounce, until he was tired. By that time the blankets had to be refolded.
"You must permit me to walk back, at least to the road, with you," he insisted, gathering up her armload of branches. "I couldn't think of leaving you here alone." As he stooped to raise the gay woodland treasures he smiled to himself, ever so slightly. This was not his first season out, either.
"May be worse," she finished, though perhaps not in the way he intended. "Suit yourself about it," he yielded. "I don't want lodging, anyhow." The landlord came staggering in with an armload of cheap bed-covers and threw them down where his dragoon of a wife directed with imperious gesture. "Just look at all that money invested and no return!" she lamented.
"No one can double-cross me without my taking the trouble to show him he can't do it twice, can they, Marion?" as his wife came in with an armload of wood she had just split. "You are as revengeful as a wolf, if that's what you mean," replied Mrs. Falkner. "Not that you've tried it on me." Charleton gave her an amused glance not unmixed with admiration.
"Thought you heard me say when I left that the Great Western had offered to get me Jean Douglas for leading lady," Luck put in, looking around distractedly for a place to deposit his armload of packages. "That's one thing that kept me waiting for her to show up. Of course a man naturally expects a woman to take her own time about starting " "I like that!" Jean drawled.
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