A half-inch of cigar burned to ashes between Prentiss’s finger-tips before he spoke.
“So—the Sheep Queen is ostracized?”
“Well—rather!” with unctuous emphasis. “My wife tried to take her up—but she couldn’t make it stick. Found it would hurt us in our business, socially, and all that.”
Prentiss raised his cigar to his lips and looked at Toomey through slightly narrowed lids which might or might not be due to smoke as he asked:
“Just what was her offense?”
Toomey laughed.
“It would be hard to say as to that. She came here under a cloud, and has been under one ever since. She has no antecedents, no blood, and even in a town like Prouty such things count. Her mother was Jezebel of the Sand Coulee, a notorious roadhouse in the southern part of the state; her father was God-knows-who—some freighter or sheepherder, most like.”
“Interesting—quite. Go on.”
Toomey did not note the constraint in Prentiss’s voice and proceeded with gusto:
“She followed off a fellow called Mormon Joe, and trailed in here in overalls behind the little band of ewes that gave them their start. He took up a homestead back in the hills and they lived on about as near nothing as anybody could, and live at all—like a couple of white Indians sleeping in tents and eating out of a frying pan.