The section-boss spoke first. Not incapable of feeling, yet disliking to show emotion because it might be counted a weakness, he hastened to clear the air. "Say, Dallas," he drawled, with a survey of the battle-field, "he ought t' had some red Mexican beans fer his Injuns." But the remark failed to appeal.
David Bond made a shake-down for himself beside Lancaster's bunk, using an armful of hay and the robes and quilts from his pung. However, the fact that he needed rest, or that his couch was ready, did not tempt him from the fire. Long after his host disappeared behind the swinging Navajo blankets, he sat by the hearth. And Dallas stayed with him, Marylyn's sleepy head pillowed in her lap.
The elder girl felt strangely drawn to him. He returned the interest he inspired. Like Lounsbury, he marked the unusual character of this woman of the far frontier. But he saw further than had the younger man: With her father and sister, she was all firmness and strength, as if she held herself to be the mainstay of the family; yet, now and then, unwittingly, she betrayed qualities that were distinctly opposite. Like Lounsbury, too, when he touched upon the subject of her life it was to inquire if she had spent any of its years in a town. He felt certain that she had not; at the same time, his belief was curiously contradicted by her bearing.
"I'll always live on the plains," she said, having told him of the mesa and their migration north; "if I left 'em for a while, I'd learn things I don't know now; and when I came back, maybe I wouldn't be satisfied with the shack, or with dad and Marylyn."
"Child, where did you get that thought?" he asked, astonished.
"I don't know—only my mother would 'a' been happy in Texas if she'd been born there. But she wasn't, and she wanted her old home till she died."
She wanted her old home till she died—it was only a sentence, yet the quiet pathos of it bared to him the tragedy of that mother's exile.
"Never a great city, daughter," he advised. "Stay here, menaced by Indians, among rough men and women, with storms and toil besetting you, but never go to a great city. It is close and dirty and paved, and in it no man may fill his lungs with pure air, or touch his feet to God's green earth."
"In cities," questioned Dallas, but in a low tone, as if she wished no one to overhear; "in cities, do—do the women dress like me?" She raised herself a little, though without disturbing Marylyn, so that he might see her plain, collarless waist and straight, scant skirt.
He gave her a smile—a smile as rare and transforming as her own. She had allowed him a glimpse of her suppressed girlishness. "Would that they did, my daughter," he answered.