“I’m glad we’ve got around to that,” dryly remarked The Falcon. “I’m growing the least bit curious.”
“All right, Thomas. We’ll satisfy that curiosity of yours. Please give me the fountain pen I see sticking out of the slot in the bib of your beautiful blue overalls.”
The Falcon handed her a handsome fountain pen, heavy with chased gold.
She laughed as she examined it. “Didn’t your brother stiffs wonder where you swiped this?” she inquired.
“I almost never carried it in sight,” he explained. “But I had taken it with me when Daisy and I went to Los Angeles, of course, and had forgotten to remove it when I went to see you at Squawtooth. But for that I doubt if we’d have it with us now. I assure you, however, it’s not a magic pen.”
“Oh, yes it is! Watch it!”
She unscrewed the pen and deliberately poured the ink on the ground. Then she went to the bubbling water, stooping till the two long braids of chestnut hair hanging forward over her shoulders had to be tossed aside to keep them dry. She thoroughly cleansed all parts of the pen, and held it up in the wind to drain.
Next she picked up from their scant supplies a can of evaporated milk, in the top of which two holes had been punched. One hole she held directly over the magazine of the pen. The white milk spurted out and filled it.
She screwed the pen together once more, laid one of the messages on her knee, and began to write between the lines of the portions written by her in pencil.
“So young and sweet!” sighed The Falcon. “Isn’t it a pity!”