“He don’t look feline or canine or even equine—I ask you, does he, now?” Pape waved a prideful hand toward his fellow Montanan. “You enquired if I had a coat-of-arms. You remember? You seem to set store on the insignia of a fellow’s who, whence and whither. Yonder steer, ma’am, wears my escutcheon.”
“Wears it? I—I don’t seem to begin to understand you.”
“Then it is well that I am here to help you understand. Your necessity is my opportunity.” Pape thoroughly dusted another block of cement. “Note, if you please, the interrogation mark burned into the hair of the red’s right rump and the odd angle at which it is placed. That is the shield of the house of Pape.”
Whether at his words or the hand on her elbow which was inviting her closer to the hang-head exhibit in the street, Mrs. Sturgis laughed with a nervous note.
“But that is absurd! A question-mark a shield?”
“Pardon me—no more absurd than any new idea before demonstration.”
All whimsicality disappeared in the serious set of the Westerner’s face. He straightened; demanded Jane Lauderdale’s attention with a look; continued:
“To take nothing for granted, but to question everything has become my shield. With it before me, the fights I find necessary are forewon. Nobody can take me by surprise or press through my guard. Nothing—positively nothing that I want is impossible to obtain.”
This rather extravagant sounding claim Harford contested—Pape had hoped he would, while fearing he wouldn’t.
“Dear me,” he exclaimed, “you seem to be a sort of natural-born New Thoughter.”