“Thar you be!” said Enright, making a deprecatory gesture, “another case of woman, lovely woman! However, even if this Cactus lady has done rung in a cold hand onto us, we must still prance 'round an' show her a good time when she trails in with her prey. Where the honour of the camp is concerned, we whoops it up! Of course the Cactus don't please us none with this deal; but most likely she pleases herse'f, which, after all, is the next best thing. Gents,” concluded Enright, after a pause, “the return of the new couple will be the signal of a general upheaval in their honour. It's to be hoped our young friends, Cottonwood an' Jinks, will by then be healthful enough to participate tharin. Barkeep! the liquor, please! Boys, the limit's off; wherefore drink hearty!”
“Which I has preemonitions from the first, this yere Cactus female is a brace game,” remarked Texas Thompson, as he filled his glass; “that's whatever!”
“Oh! I don't know!” replied Cherokee Hall thoughtfully. “She has her right to place her bets to please herse'f, an' win or lose, this camp should be proud to turn for her. Wolfville can't always make a killin'—can't always be on velvet; but as long as the Cactus an' her victim pitches camp yere, Wolfville can call herse'f ahead on the deal. I sees no room for cavil, an' I yereby freights my glass to the Cactus an' the shorthorn she's tied down.”
ANNA MARIE
Anna Marie was to be a new woman. She had decided that for herself. In the carrying out of her destinies, Anna Marie had cut her hair short. She also made a specialty of very mannish costumes, and, outwardly, at least, became as virile as a woman might be with a make-up the basis of which was bound to be a skirt.
Anna Marie was motherless, and at the age of nineteen, when she determined to become a new woman, had no advice save her father's to depend on. When she discussed an adoption of broader and more masculine methods on her girlish part with her father, the old gentleman looked puzzled, and said:
“Well, my dear! I have great confidence in your judgment. There is nothing like experience, so go ahead. You will find, however, before you have gone far, that you labour under many structural defects. The great Architect didn't lay you out for a man, Anna Marie; you were not intended for such a fate.” However, Anna Marie kept on. She was looking for a fuller liberty and a wider field. She was too delicately and too accurately determined in her tastes to be a fool to cigarettes, or swept down in a current of profanity. Bad language she would leave to the real man; in her career as a new woman nothing so vigorous was needed.
But men did other things, had other freedoms; and from that long male list of liberties Anna Marie proceeded to pick out a line of freedom for herself. She had had enough of that pent-up Utica which confines the conventional woman. What she wanted was more room: that is, of proper, decorous sort.