“I reckon we can fix ye up. Light down and come in.”
She was noting well her guest, and her shrewd eyes determined him to be no common man. He had the bearing of a gentleman, the carriage of a man used to command. Certain of his garments seemed to show wealth, although she noted, when he stripped off his traveling-smock, that he wore not a new coat, but an old one—very old, she would have said, soiled, stained, faded. It looked as if it had once been part of a uniform.
Her guest, whoever he was—and she neither knew nor asked, for the wilderness tavern held no register, and few questions were asked or answered—paid small attention to the woman. He carried his saddlebags into the room pointed out to him, flung them down, and began to pace up and down, sometimes talking to himself. The woman eyed him from time to time as she went about her duties.
“Set up and eat,” she said at last. “I reckon your men are not coming.”
“I thank you, Madam,” said the stranger, with gentle courtesy. “Do not let me trouble you too much. I have been ill of late, and do not as yet experience much hunger.”
Indeed, he scarcely tasted the food. He sat, as she noted, a long time, gazing fixedly out of the door, over the forest, toward the West.
“Is it not a beautiful world, Madam?” said he, after a time, in a voice of great gentleness and charm. “I have seen the forest often thus in the West in the evening, when the day was done. It is wonderful!”
“Yes. Some of my folks is thinking of going out further into the West.”
He turned to her abstractedly, yet endeavoring to be courteous.