“Doesn’t the desert seem big to-night,” remarked the girl. “When the sun goes down it seems to expand, and then as darkness comes on it contracts more and more, till finally you’re all shut in.”
“Yes,” he said simply; and for a time they walked on silently.
“Why are you so still this evening?” asked Manzanita. “Is there something the matter?”
Falcon the Flunky cleared his throat. “I’ve been thinking,” he told her, “that we oughtn’t to meet like this, Manzanita.”
“Why?”
“For one thing, your father wouldn’t approve. And back there at camp they can’t help knowing about it.”
“Well? I’m of age. I can do as I choose. If I want to be with you, it’s nobody’s business, is it?”
“That’s the old, old, commonplace defense,” he said. “But they’re wondering and chuckling in their sleeves back there in camp. And that won’t do where you’re concerned. They can’t understand, of course. If you have a friend in camp, he should be Hunter Mangan or the walking boss, or perhaps one of the bookkeepers—not one of the stiffs, a flunky.”
“Oh, you know you’re not a flunky, so far as that goes! And so does every one, I guess.”
“Perhaps. But that doesn’t help matters. It’s a rather difficult subject for a man to talk upon. You’re used to men—accustomed to being comradely with them. So you don’t exactly see the difference, now that the camps have come. And to save my soul I can’t exactly explain it myself. Somehow or other, I should think it right and proper for you to be friendly and democratic with your cowmen, but it’s different with the stiffs. And I can’t tell you why or how, but I feel it.”