“Jim Wilson passed by and left the message. Telegram. What’s more, here is the real news. He is not coming alone, he’s married.” And Smiles—Arthur Holden, at such times when his dignity and his position as foreman of the Double X required it—grinned with the full appreciation of the sensation his words caused.
“Married?” echoed Pete, who seemed to be the only one whose tongue did not seem paralyzed. “To whom?”
“Well, you see, it’s like this.” The first speaker drawled out the words. “I hate to confess it, but Jack neither asked me nor told me the particulars. I shall have to chide him, I fear.”
“I suppose he should have asked your permission,” Pete agreed.
“What I want to know is, would you have given it?” This, from another of the men, Al Graham.
“Yes, Smiles, with your experience, how would you have decided?”
Smiles was notoriously bashful and could never be found when any women folks were about.
“I guess Smiles’ experience in the last twenty years has been seeing the Wells over beyond. If he saw them first he’d vanish, pronto.” The last speaker was older than the rest, quiet appearing, a little sad. They knew him as Pop. He had given his name as Dick Smith, when he first came, many years ago. The ethics of the West is never to ask questions of a man’s past. It judges a man by his present. The speaker continued: “But I tell you fellows, being married is too good for most of us It’s a wonderful thing, if you can make a go of it, if you can support the proposition.”
The talk continued about the surprise and an eager desire to see the couple was expressed by many of the men. There was a general feeling of pleasure, also, at Dean’s coming home. These men were all good friends of John Dean. But, mixed with it all, curiously, was that tone of sadness and regret, as if the subject of the conversation had gone from them. They all seemed to feel that his being married placed them beyond his pale.
“Do you know, some day I expect Jack Dean to get very tired of this neck of the woods and pull up his stakes. He will be one more of the many who drift to the big town and think that that is the life. I wonder how Mrs. Dean—sounds funny, doesn’t it?—” continued Al Graham, “is going to stand it? It’s hard for anyone who doesn’t like it.”