“Why, it looks fair enough, the way they do it,” she answered, questioning Dr. Slavens with her eyes.
He shook his head.
“You can’t tell,” he responded. “I’ve seen enough crookedness in this tent-town in the past four days to set my suspicions against everything and every official in it.”
“Well, the drawing’s to be held at Meander, you know,” reminded William Bentley, the toolmaker, “and Meander advertises itself as a moral center. It seems that it was against this town from the very start–it wanted the whole show to itself. Here’s a circular that I got at Meander headquarters today. It’s got a great knock against Comanche in it.” 27
“Yes, I saw it,” said the doctor. “It sounds like one crook knocking another. But it can’t be any worse than this place, anyhow. I think I’ll take a ride over there in a day or so and size it up.”
“Well, I surrender all pretensions to Claim Number One,” laughed Mrs. Reed, a straining of color in her cheeks.
June had not demanded fudge once in four days. That alone was enough to raise the colors of courage in her mother’s face, even if there hadn’t been a change in the young lady for the better in other directions. Four days of Wyoming summer sun and wind had made as much difference in June as four days of September blaze make in a peach on the tip of an exposed bough. She was browning and reddening beautifully, and her hair was taking on a trick of wildness, blowing friskily about her eyes.
It was plain that June had in her all the making of a hummer. That’s what Horace Bentley, the lawyer, owned to himself as he told her mother in confidence that a month of that high country, with its fresh-from-creation air, would be better for the girl’s natural endowments than all the beauty-parlors of Boston or the specialists of Vienna. Horace felt of his early bald spot, half believing that some stubby hairs were starting there already.
There was still a glow of twilight in the sky when lights appeared in the windowless windows of the church, and the whine of tuning fiddles came out of its 28 open door. Mrs. Reed stiffened as she located the sound, and an expression of outraged sanctity appeared in her face. She turned to Dr. Slavens.
“Are they going to–to–dance in that building?” she demanded.