But there must be no more tears, she told herself at last. They were a confession of weakness, they dissipated courage; and the handkerchief which had been a moist ball dried in her hot hand. She said aloud to her flushed reflection in the glass:
“Well,” determinedly, “I’ve never thought myself a coward and I won’t act like one now. There’s been many a thousand before me gone through this experience without whining and I guess I can do the same. Until I’m a sure enough down-and-outer I’ll do the best I can. I must find a cheaper room and buy an oil-stove. Ugh! the first step on the down grade.”
There was a rap upon the door and she lowered the shade a little so that the bell-boy with her evening paper should not see her reddened eyes. Instead of the paper he carried a long pasteboard box.
Flowers? How extraordinary—perhaps Peters; no, not Peters, as she read the name of a side street florist on the box, he was not to be suspected of any such economy as that. Roses—a dozen—a little too full blown to last very long but lovely. T. Victor Sprudell’s card fell out as she took them from the box.
XIII
“Off His Range”
Bruce stood before the blackboard in the Bartlesville station studying the schedule. A train went west at 11.45. The first train went east at 11.10. He hesitated a moment, then the expression of uncertainty upon his face hardened into decision. He turned quickly and bought a ticket east. If Sprudell had lied he was going to find it out.
As he sat by the car window watching the smug, white farm-houses and big red barns of the middle west fly by, their dull respectability, their commonplace prosperity vaguely depressed him. What if he should be sentenced for life to walk up to his front door between two rows of whitewashed rocks, to live surrounded by a picket fence, and to die behind a pair of neat green blinds? But mostly his thoughts were a jumble of Sprudell, of his insincere cordiality and the unexpected denouement when Abe Cone’s call had forced his hand; of Dill and his mission, and disgust at his own carelessness in failing to record his claims.
They concentrated finally upon the work which lay before him once he had demonstrated the truth or falsity of Sprudell’s assertion that Slim’s family were not to be found. He turned the situation over and over in his mind and always it resolved itself into the same thing, namely, his lack of money. That obstacle confronted him at every turn and yet in spite of it, in spite of the doubts and fears which reason and caution together thrust into his mind, his determination to win, to outwit Sprudell, to make good his boast, grew stronger with every turn of the car wheels.