Good old Tex! That was little short of saintly. Camp cooking where he was autocrat was far more to his taste. He hated “messin’ ’round where there was women,” as he expressed it. Here was sacrifice indeed! Tex scrubbed his hands until they fairly bled, enveloped himself in a large checked gingham apron, and proceeded to act as chef until the eloper had been replaced.
Something deepened in me. I was seeing a new thing.
Owen had been gone nearly a week. One morning I happened to be in the kitchen when Mrs. Bohm entered. Casually she asked Tex whether Ed More’s wife had left him before he went to jail, or after he got out. Half in joke, I said:
“Mercy, Mrs. Bohm, is there a man in this country, with the exception of Tex, who hasn’t been in jail or on the way there?”
I was interrupted by the slamming of a door, and Tex had vanished. Mrs. Bohm looked embarrassed as she replied:
“I just hate to tell you, Mrs. Brook, and Tex would feel terrible to have you know; but you say such queer things sometimes, I’d better tell you now that Tex”—she paused a moment—“he’s only been out of the ‘pen’ himself a year.”
“Tex in the penitentiary? What on earth for?” I was almost dazed.
ROPING AND CUTTING OUT CATTLE
“Well, I’ll tell you.” Mrs. Bohm began the story with apparent reluctance, but her manner soon betrayed a certain zest. “You see, about four years ago Tex was workin’ for a man up on Crow Creek and took some cattle on to Omaha to sell for him. When he came back he never brought a cent of money, and told how he had been held up and robbed. Everybody believed it at first, then all to onct his family—they live over West—began to dress to kill, and Tex bought brass beds for every room in the house; then folks began to suspicion where he got the money, and he was sent to the Pen for two years.”