Thompson laughed: "You must be a pilgrim in these parts," he said. "Most folks would ride half a day to git here 'round feedin' time. We always count on two or three extry, so I guess they'll be a-plenty." The man's laugh was infectious, and Patty found herself smiling. She liked him from the first. There was a ponderous heartiness about him, and she liked the way his little brown eyes sparkled from out their network of sun-browned wrinkles. "You trot along in, now, an' tell Miz T. she can begin dishin' up whenever she likes. We'll be 'long d'rectly. They'll be plenty time to talk horse after we've et. My work teams earns a good hour of noonin', an' I don't begrudge 'em an hour an' a half, hot days."
Patty found Mrs. Thompson slight and quiet as her husband was big and hearty. But her smile was as engaging as his, and an indefinable something about her made the girl feel at home the moment she crossed the threshold. "I came to see Mr. Thompson about a horse, and he insisted that I stay to dinner," she apologized.
"Why, of course you'll stay to dinner. But you must be hot an' tired. The wash dish is there beside the door. You better use it before Thompson an' the hands comes, they always slosh everything all up—they don't wash, they waller."
"Mr. Thompson said to tell you you could begin to dish up whenever you're ready."
The woman smiled. "Yes, an' have everythin' set an' git cold, while they feed the horses an' then like's not, stand 'round a spell an' size up the hay stack, er mebbe mend a piece of harness or somethin'. I guess you ain't married, er you wouldn't expect a man to meals 'til you see him comin'. Seems like no matter how hungry they be, if they's some little odd job they can find to do just when you get the grub set on, they pick that time to do it. 'Specially if it's somethin' that don't 'mount to anythin', an' like's not's b'en layin' 'round in plain sight a week."
Patty laughingly admitted she was not married. "But, I'd teach 'em a lesson," she said. "I'd put the things on and let them get cold."
The older woman smiled, and at the sound of voices, peered out the door: "Here they come now," she said, and proceeded to carry heaping vegetable dishes and a steaming platter of savory boiled meat from the stove to the table. There was a prodigious splashing outside the door and a moment later Thompson appeared, followed by his two ranch hands, hair wet and shining, plastered tightly to their scalps, and faces aglow from vigorous scrubbing. "You mind Mr. Sinclair, that used to prospect in the hills," introduced Mrs. Thompson; "this is his daughter."
Her husband bowed awkwardly: "Glad to know you. We know'd yer paw—used to stop now an' again on his way to town. He was a smart man. Liked to talk to him. He'd be'n all over." The man turned his attention to his plate and the meal proceeded in solemn silence to its conclusion. The two ranch hands arose and disappeared through the door, and tilting back in his chair Thompson produced a match from his pocket, and proceeded to whittle it into a toothpick. "I heard in town how you was out in the hills," he began. "They said yer paw went back East—" he paused as if uncertain how to proceed.
Patty nodded: "Yes, he went back home, and this spring he died. He told me he had made a strike and I came out here to locate it."
The kindly brown eyes regarded her intently: "Ever do any prospectin'?"