She sat on his camp cot and reflected. It was a big bare room, with a bearskin and a beaded vest on the wall for decoration. There was a table with a Victrola and several bottles, and on the window-sill there were stacks of the little fifteen-cent magazines with pictures on them of bucking broncos and cheering cowboys in furry chaps. The last of the West was here, in these dude-wranglers with their tall stories and their horses. Now she was sad with a tender melancholy, and somewhat sleepy. What were they all looking for here in the mountains? Why did they come? She shook her head.
“Now,” said Tom in the doorway. “What’s it all about?” He handed her a glass. “You ought to feel better with this,” he said. He sat down next to her on the bed and put his arm around her. “What’s eating you?” he asked gently. “Tell me about it and you’ll feel better.”
Her face buried in his shoulder, she answered, “Nothing. I feel sleepy. I’m all right.”
“Sure nothing’s the matter?”
Again she shook her head.
“Well,” he said, “I think there is. You don’t come around as much as you used to. You’ve been running around with that funny crowd, the queer ones.”
“Why, Tom!” With exaggerated indignation, she sat erect and stared at him.
“Sure you are. I saw you at the show the other night with Madden.”
“He’s not queer,” she protested.
“He ain’t? Then I don’t know anything about queer ones. Take your medicine there.”