“No; things change a good deal in four years’ time, even sentiment–and names.”
“But it wouldn’t be asking too much to expect you to respect some of the changes?”
“I don’t suppose,” he mused, “that many people around here care whether a man’s name is the one he goes by, or whether it’s the one he gets his mail under at the post-office at Comanche. That’s generally believed to be a man’s own business. Of course, he might carry it too far, but that’s his own lookout.”
“Are you on your way to Comanche?” she asked.
Boyle motioned her to the trunk of the cottonwood whose branches she had been chopping into fuel, with 222 graceful and unspoken invitation to sit down and hear the tale of his projected adventures.
“I’ve been wearing a pair of these high-heeled boots the past few days for the first time since I rode the range,” he explained, “and they make my ankles tired when I stand around.”
He seated himself beside her on the fallen log.
“No, I’m not going to Comanche,” said he. “I came down here to see you. They gave me the worst horse in the stable at Meander, and he’ll never be able to carry me back there without a long rest. I’ll have to make camp by the river.”
She glanced at his horse, on the saddle of which hung, cowboy fashion, a bag of grub which also contained a frying-pan and coffeepot, she knew, from having seen many outfits like it in the stores at Comanche. A blanket was rolled behind the high cantle. As for the horse, it seemed as fresh and likely as if it had come three miles instead of thirty. She believed from that evidence that Jerry’s talk about being forced to make camp was all contrived. He had come prepared for a stay.
“I got into the habit of carrying those traps around with me when I was a kid,” he explained, following her eyes, “and you couldn’t drive me two miles away from a hotel without them. They come in handy, too, in a pinch like this, I’m here to tell you.”