The sheriff was boilin’. “Here, Cupid,” he says, “is two hunderd. Now, we’ll go down to Mrs. Bridger’s again, and you offer her as much as she wants.”
“Offer it you’self.”
“No, you do it, Cupid,–please. But don’t you tell her whose money it is.”
“I won’t. Here’s where we git up The Ranchers’ Loan Fund.”
I coaxed Bergin as far as the front step this time. Wasn’t that fine? But, say! Mrs. Bridger wouldn’t touch a cent of that money, no ma’am.
“If I was to take it as a loan,” she says, “I’d have interest to pay. So I’d be worse off ’n I am now. And I couldn’t take it in no other way. Thank y’, just the same. And how’s Miss Sewell t’-day?”
It wasn’t no use fer me to tell her that The Ranchers’ Loan Fund didn’t want no interest. She was as set as Rogers’s Butte.
During the next week ’r two, the sheriff and me dropped down to the widda’s frequent. I’d talk to her–about chicken-raisin’ mostly–whilst Bergin ’d play with the kid. One day I got him to come as far as the door! But I never got him no further. There he stuck, and ’d stand on the sill fer hours, lookin’ out at Willie–like a great, big, scairt, helpless calf.
At first the widda talked to him, pleasant and encouragin’. But when he just said, “Yas, ma’am,” and “No, ma’am,” and nothin’ else, she changed. I figger (’cause women is right funny) that her pride was some hurt. What if he was bound up in the boy? Didn’t he have no interest in her? It hurt her all the worse, mebbe, ’cause I was there, and seen how he acted. ’Fore long she begun to git plumb outen patience with him. And one day, when he was standin’ gazin’ out, she flew up.
“George Bergin,” she says, “a door is somethin’ else ’cept a place to scratch you back on.” And she shut it–him outside, plumb squshed!