Up-State lent over, elbows on his knees, face in his hands, and begun tremblin’–Why, y’ know, even a hoss ’ll git homesick. Now, I brung a flea-bitten mare from down on the lower Cimarron oncet, and blamed if that little son-of-a-gun didn’t hoof it all the way back, straighter ’n a string! Yas, ma’am. And so, a-course, it’s natu’al fer a man. Wal, I ketched on to how things was with Up-State, and I moseyed.
I was at the deepot pretty frequent them days–waitin’. Macie hadn’t talked to me none yet, and mebbe she wouldn’t. But I was on hand in case the notion ’d strike her.
Her hangin’ out agin me and her paw tickled them eatin’-house Mamies turrible. They thought her idear of earnin’ her own money, and then goin’ East to be a’ op’ra singer, was just grand.
But the rest of the town felt diff’rent. And behind my back all the women folks and the boys that knowed me was sayin’ it was a darned shame. They figgered that a gal gone loco on the stage proposition wouldn’t make no kind of a wife fer a cow-punch. “Would she camp down in Oklahomaw,” they says, “and cook three meals a day, and wash out blue shirts, when she’s set on gittin’ up afore a passel of highflyers and yelpin’ ‘Marguerite’? Nixey.”
Next thing, one day at Silverstein’s, here come the parson to me, lookin’ worried. “Cupid,” he says, “git on the good side of that gal as quick as ever you can–and marry her. The stage is a’ awful place fer a decent gal. Keep her offen it if you love her soul. And if I can help, just whistle.”
I said thank y’, but I was feard marryin’ was a long way off.
“But, Alec,” goes on the parson, “that Simpson has gone back t’ Noo York––”
“What?”
“Yas. He put all his doctor truck into his gasoline wagon last night and choo-chooed outen town. If he’s there, and she goes, wal,–I don’t like the looks of it.”
“I don’t neither, parson. He’s crooked as a cow-path, that feller. Have you tole her paw?”