Thereupon she told him her story. Of course Lafe did not believe half of what she said, although he gave ear gravely to her direct manner of replying to his questions. The girl's self-possession and cool disregard of the extremity to which she was reduced, suggested only one explanation to his mind—ripe experience. He had never encountered these traits among ladies of domestic virtues.
Her name was Hetty Ferrier, and Miss Ferrier had exactly eleven dollars and seventy cents. She had lived in Eau Claire, but went to Chicago to make a fortune and to marry a rich, handsome youth, as girls starting out in the world invariably do. There she got a job in a department store, where they paid her four dollars and a half a week to keep soul and body together, though subsequently little consideration was shown for her soul. When she parried the assistant manager's attentions she was removed from the lace counter to the hardware department, but she did not care. Then she fell ill; for breakfast foods, wetted with watery milk and eaten in a room opening on hot, slate roofs, are not a sustaining diet when one stands all day on one's feet. So she was sent back home from the hospital. And her parents were miserably poor. Her father had borrowed the money to bring her home. She began reading advertisements again, and finally answered one of the matrimonial variety.
That was all. This man Jackson replied to her, and his letters were very nice—those of a perfect gentleman, Miss Ferrier assured the sheriff. Then he sent the money, and she journeyed to El Paso. He was not what she had expected, but he treated her decently when he met her at the train. Furthermore, he could be very amusing and "splendid company," she said; so she went through a ceremony with him. After that he went away to get tickets, and when he came back, he was drunk. She was frightened and sat up all night in a day coach, and he went to sleep in a Pullman, waking up sometimes to order the porter to tell her to go to sleep at once. When they got out, he said they would take the stage to Badger, where he had some business to transact, and then go on to Nogales.
The sheriff pressed for fuller information. Had she no friends while working in the city? Yes, she knew some of the girls, but they were always scheming for a good time, and she never had any money. The nicest ones lived at home, but not all of them. Several young men had been kind to her and had taken her to theaters. But they usually tried to get fresh, said Miss Ferrier. Some appeared to have heaps of money, but others worked for it as she did, only they spent it with princely recklessness on pay night.
There was one—she came to a full stop. Yes, she would tell him about that one, too. He was very poor. Indeed, he dressed so shabbily that the girls tittered when he called to meet her at the employés' entrance. No; he treated her all right and was always respectful. She liked him because he was very good, and different. He was a student and was working his way through college by waiting in a dining-hall. They had hoped to marry some day. Then she got sick and went home. It would have taken years, anyway. She seemed never to have regarded the prospect with much hope.
"Uh-huh!" said the sheriff, when she had finished. "And what do you aim to do now?"
"I don't know. What can I do? Get a job as waitress, I guess."
She appeared undistressed by the prospect, but it was the apathy of countless failures and physical exhaustion.
"No," he said with decision. "You're a heap too pretty for that."
"You think so?" she asked indifferently.