"Good riddance!" she muttered. "I wouldn't have that black-eyed devil hanging around this town for money. He's onery enought to do me mischief. I wonder who he was? He might be anything or anybody; a dago duke or a hold-up—or both. Anyway, he's gone, and if I never see him again it'll be soon enough."
She sat down in her office chair and rested her heels on the window sill while her cigarette burned to ashes between her listless fingers. For a time she watched the white light of the June moon grow on the line of dimpled foothills, the myriad odors of spring were in the air and the balmy west wind lifted the hair at her temples as it came through the open window. She felt lonely—inexpressibly lonely. She thought of Alice Freoff and restlessness grew. Downstairs she heard Essie Tisdale's merry laughter and it changed the current of her thoughts.
She had learned her story now and the mystery of her identity had given the little belle of Crowheart an added attraction. Everybody in Crowheart knew her story for that matter; it was one of the stock tales of the country to be repeated to interest strangers.
In the old days when Crowheart was a blacksmith shop and the stamping ground of "Snow-shoe" Brown, whose log cabin hung on the edge of the bench overlooking the stream like a crow's nest in a cottonwood tree, "Snow-shoe" Brown had yelled in vain, one spring day, at a man and woman on the seat of a covered wagon who were preparing to ford the stream at the usual crossing. But the sullen roar of the water drowned his warning that it was swimming depth, and, even while he ran for his horse and uncoiled his saddle rope, the current was sweeping the wagon and the struggling horses down stream. He followed along the bank until the horse's feet came up and the wagon went down, while there floated from the open end, among other things, something that looked to his astonished eyes like a wooden cradle. He threw his rope, and threw again, with the skill which long practice in roping mavericks had given him; and gently, gently, with a success which seemed miraculous even to "Snow-shoe" Brown, he had drawn the bobbing cradle gradually to shore. Inside, a baby smiled up at him with the bluest eyes he ever had seen. There was a picture primer tucked beneath the flannel coverlet and it contained the single clue to her identity. "Esther Tisdale" was written on the fly-leaf with a recent date.
"Snow-shoe" Brown said she was a maverick and unblushingly declared that he claimed all mavericks that he had had his rope on; therefore "Esther Tisdale" belonged to him. He left her in the care of the wife of a cattleman who hoped thereby to purchase immunity from "Snow-shoe's" activities, which he did, though that person rustled elsewhere with renewed energy, since he said he had a family to keep. So she learned to ride and shoot as straight as "Snow-shoe" himself and even as a child gave promise of a winsome, lovely girlhood. The unique relationship ended when her guardian died in his boots in the little cowtown over beyond the Limestone Rim. A hard winter and the inroads of sheep "broke" the cattleman who sold out and moved away, while Esther Tisdale shifted for herself that she might not be a burden. She was nearly twenty now, and, in the democratic community never had felt or been made to feel that her position was subservient or inferior. Therefore when her work was done and she bounded up the stairs to Dr. Harpe's door she felt sure of a welcome.
"It's only Essie Tisdale," she said in her merry voice as she rapped and peered into the room.
"Come in, Essie; I'm lonesome as the deuce!"
It was some time later that Mrs. Terriberry sailing through the corridor in her dressing-sacque and petticoat, with her feet scuffling in Mr. Terriberry's carpet-slippers, had the stone-china water-pitcher dashed from her hand as she turned a corner.
"Why, Essie!"
"Oh, I'm sorry, Mrs. Terriberry!"