“Now, that sounds more comfortabler,” he told her. “I didn’t know for a minute who you meant, that name’s gittin’ to be a stranger to me.”
“Well, we don’t want a stranger along tonight,” said she, seriously.
“You’re right, we don’t. That there horse you’re ridin’ he’s a good one, as good as any in the cavalry, even if he ain’t as tall. He was an outlaw till Missus Mathews tamed him down.”
“How did she do it—not break him like a bronco-buster?”
“No, she done it like she tames Injuns and other folks, by gentle words and gentler hands. Some they’ll tell you she’s sunk down to the ways of Injuns, clean out of a white man’s sight in the dirt and doin’s of them dead-horse eatin’ ’Rapahoes. But I know she ain’t. She lets herself down on a level to reach ’em, and git her hands under ’em so she can lift ’em up, the same as she puts herself on my level when she wants to reach me, or your level, or anybody’s level, mom.”
“Her eyes and her soft ways tell you that, Banjo, as plain as any words.”
“She’s done ten times as much as that big-backed buffalo of a preacher she’s married to ever done for his own people, or ever will. He’s clim above ’em with his educated ways; the Injun’s ironed out of that man. You can’t reach down and help anybody up, mom, if you go along through this here world on stilts.”
“Not very well, Banjo.”
“You need both of your hands to hold your stilts, mom; you ain’t got even a finger to spare for a low-down feller like me.”