“You are imaginative tonight,” he said, smiling at her startled, olive-tinted face. “It’s quite a leap, though, from romance to gunfights and—”
Mary turned to call back to them, “Jerry and I have it all planned, just what we are to do. I’m to ask some innocent question and, Dora, you’re to help me out, but we mustn’t appear too interested or too prying, Jerry says, or for some reason, quite unknown, old Mr. Harvey will put on the clam act. Shh! Here we are! Good, there’s a light. Now Jerry is to speak his piece first and I am to chime in. Then, Dora, you take your cue from me.”
Dick whispered close to his companion’s ear, “I evidently haven’t a speaking part in the tragedy or comedy about to be enacted.”
Dora giggled. “You can be scenery,” she teased, recalling to Dick the forgotten fact that he was wearing a cowboy outfit for the first time and feeling rather awkward in it.
Jerry opened the door, a jangling bell rang; then he stepped aside and let Mary enter first.
CHAPTER V
POOR LITTLE BODIL
Old Mr. Harvey was dozing in a tilted armchair close to his stove. He sat up with a start when his discordant-toned bell rang, and blinked into the half-darkness near the door. The smoked chimney on his hanging kerosene lamp in the middle of the room and near the ceiling did little to illumine the place. When he saw who his visitors were, he gave his queer cackling laugh, “Wall, I’ll be dinged ef I wa’n’t a dreamin’ I was back in holdup days and that some of them thar bandits was bustin’ in to clean out my stock.” Then, as he rose, almost creakingly, he said, disparagingly, as he glanced about at the dust and cobweb-covered shelves, “Not as how they’d find onythin’ now worth the totin’ away.”
Having, by that time, gone around back of his long counter, he peered through misty spectacles at Mary. “Is thar suthin’ I could be gettin’ fer yo’, Little Miss?” he asked.
Jerry stepped forward and placed a half dollar on the counter. “Stamps, please, Mr. Harvey,” he said. “I reckon that’s all we’re wanting tonight, thanks.”
The cowboy put the stamps in his pocket, dropped his mother’s letter in a slot, and turned, as though he were about to leave, but Mary detained him with: