The boy from Troublesome stared his incredulity. She seemed to him a marvelous sort of being. Her simple dress was to his eyes extravagantly elegant and her patrician delicacy of feature belonged to an order which neither the drudgery of the hills nor that of the state prison had given him opportunity to study.
"I reckon," he said slowly and diffidently, but no longer with a note of bitterness, "hit hain't wuth while to pester ye."
"That's all right," she commanded. "Climb in." Slowly he rose and obeyed, the whiskey-flask protruding from his coat-pocket, and when they had gone a quarter of a mile, Newt made his sole voluntary contribution to the conversation.
"I'm obleeged ter ye," he said.
She did not question him unduly, nor ply him with conversation, but she smiled, and in some subtle fashion there broke through the storm-wrack of the boy's bitterness a thin ray of light and glow of graciousness. She let him out at the court-house square, where buggies stood in rows and traders jostled and the auctioneer's shout resounded, and there he lost himself in the crowd; but first he stood looking after her until her buggy turned a corner, and then he remembered that she had nodded with a friendly smile of farewell. It was rather wonderful to be treated like a human being.
Newt Spooner wanted food and he wanted it to be cheap, so he foraged up and down Main Street until he came upon that lower section where several shabby eating-houses were sandwiched between equally shabby saloons.
And while he stood on the pavement undecided which way to turn, a hand was laid on his shoulder, and he wheeled, startled, to find himself gazing into the face of his kinsman, Red Newton.
"Come hyar," commanded the older man. "I done heered thet ye was pardoned out, an' I sorter 'lowed ye'd be making tracks fer ther mountings. I wants ter have talk with ye afore ye goes back."
"I aims ter git a snack ter eat," demurred Newt. "I hain't a-goin' ter talk ter no man afore I eats."
The other nodded.