“Be you goin’ to show them Ridge boys we’ve petered out an’ culture’s a dead dog here?” began Happy, rising.
“Do you want them to think Academy’s busted?” asked Handsome.
“Ain’t we your boys no more?” put in Trinidad, wistfully.
“Ain’t I your boy?” asked Sonora, sentimentally. “Why, what is it, Girl? Has anybody—tell me—perhaps—”
The Girl raised her head and dried her eyes; when she spoke one could have heard a pin drop.
“Oh, no, no, no,” she said with averted face, and added tremulously: “There, we won’t say no more about it. Let’s forgit it. Only when I go away I want to leave the key o’ my cabin with Old Sonora here, an’ I want you all to come up sometimes, an’ to think o’ me as the girl who loved you all, an’ sometimes is wishin’ you well, an’ I want to think o’ little Nick here runnin’ my bar an’ not givin’ the boys too much whisky.” Her words died away in a sob and her head fell forward, her hand, the while, resting upon Nick’s shoulder.
At last, Sonora saw what lay beneath her tears; the situation was all too clear to him now.
“Hold on!” he cried hoarsely. “There’s jest one reason for the Girl to leave her home an’ friends—only one: There must be some fellow away from here that she—that she likes better ’n she does any of us.” And turning once more upon the Girl, he demanded excitedly: “Is that it? Speak!”
The Girl raised her tear-stained face and looked him in the eye.
“Likes—” she repeated with a world of meaning in her voice—“in a different way, yes.”