“More than likely,” said the doctor. “I think I’ll go back up there and kind of keep an eye on her stuff. Somebody might carry some of it off.”
This unmalicious reflection on the integrity of the community hurt Smith. There was evidence of deep sorrow in his heart as he began to argue refutation of the ingenuous charge. It was humiliating, he declared, that a man should come among them and hold them in such low esteem. 290
“In this country nobody don’t go around stealin’ stuff out of houses and tents,” he protested. “You can put your stuff down on the side of the road and leave it there, and go back in a month and find it. Sheepmen leave supplies for their herders that way, and I’ve known ’em to leave their pay along with ’em Maybe it’d be a week or two before them fellers got around to it, but it’d be there when they got there. There’s no such a thing as a tramp in this country. What’d a tramp live on here?”
“I don’t question your defense of conditions as they were,” the doctor rejoined; “but I’m looking at things as they are. There are a lot of new people in here, the country is becoming civilized; and the more civilized men grow the more police and battle-ships and regiments of soldiers they need to keep things happy and peaceful between them, and to prevent their equally civilized and cultured neighbors from stepping in from across the seas and booting them out of their comfortable homes. You’ve got to keep your eyes on your suitcase and your hand on your wallet when you sit down among civilized people, Smith.”
“Say, I guess you’re right about that,” admitted Smith after some reflection. “I read in the paper the other day that they’re goin’ to build three new battle-ships. Yes, I reckon things’ll change here in this part of Wyoming now. It’ll be so in a year or two that a man can’t leave his pants hangin’ out on the line overnight.” 291
“Yes, you’ll come to that,” the doctor agreed.
“Pants?” pursued Smith reminiscently. “Pants? Well, I tell you. There was a time in this country, when I drove stage from Casper to Meander, that I knew every pair of pants between the Chugwater and the Wind River. If one man ever had come out wearin’ another feller’s pants, I’d ’a’ spotted ’em quick as I would a brand on a stray horse. Pants wasn’t as thick in them days as they are now, and crooks wasn’t as plentiful neither. I knew one old sheepman back on the Sweetwater that wore one pair of pants ’leven years.”
“That’s another of the inconveniences of civilization.”
“Pants and pie-annos,” said Smith. “But I don’t care; I’ll put in a stock of both of ’em just as soon as folks get their houses built and their alfalfa in.”
“That’s the proper spirit,” commended Slavens.