Ascending to the cabin an hour later, Moreau came upon the woman, washing the breakfast dishes in the stream that trickled from the spring. She did not hear him approach, and, watching her, he saw that she was slow and feeble in her movements. The sun spattered down through the pine boughs on her thick, brilliant-colored hair, and on the nape of her neck, where the skin was tanned to a coarse, russet brown.
“What are you doing that for?” he said, coming to a standstill in front of her. “You needn’t bother about the pans.”
“They’d oughter be cleaned,” she answered.
“You don’t want to feel,” he said, “that you’ve got to work all the time. I wanted you to rest up a bit. It’s a good place to rest here.”
She made no answer, drying the tin cups on a piece of flour sack.
“I ain’t so awful tired,” she said presently in a low voice.
“Well, don’t you worry about having everything so clean; they’ll do anyway. And the cabin’s pretty clean,—isn’t it?” he asked, somewhat anxiously.
“Yes—awful clean,” she said. Then, after a moment, she continued: “I hadn’t oughter have stayed in the cabin. It’s your’n. Me and the baby’ll be all right in the brush shed with Spotty.”
“What nonsense!” retorted Moreau. “Do you suppose I’d let you and that baby stay in the brush shed, the place where the horses have been kept all summer? You’re going to keep the cabin, and if there’s anything you want—anything that’s short, or that you might need for the baby—why, Fletcher’ll go to Hangtown and get it. Just say what you want. Not having women around, we’re probably short of all sorts of little fixings.”
“I don’t want nothing,” she said with her head down—“I ain’t never been so comfortable sence I was married.”