"Married, of course?"
A look so surprised as to seem bashful came into Childress' face. "Married—eh? Not that any one could prove, I hope!"
The Maple Leaf Midland's land agent looked indignant. "Then you don't want a ready-made farm, young man. They are sold only to married men and are designed particularly for the comfort of families."
But he did not turn entirely away, this fatherly agent. He merely nodded to a young woman who had entered the office and was waiting at the map-spread counter. This nod said that he welcomed her and that she would be next to receive his attention. The sergeant looked up hastily, his attention attracted as much by the nervous tapping of the newcomer's fingers as by the railway man's momentary abstraction. He caught a glimpse of the "next" homeseeker.
The woman was young—scarcely more than a girl. She was tall and angular. Her face was flushed, possibly from the exertion of climbing the stairs in a hurry, but not enough to hide the freckles that bridged her impudently cut nose. Her eyes looked like two of the freckles enlarged, vivified, carefully rounded and placed, so brown and solemn they were. Her hair was the sort that oftenest comes with such eyes, the color of flame, soft and very thick, as shown by the braided coronet exposed by her back-thrown felt hat.
Quite a good deal to take in at a glance; but there are glances and glances. Childress was trained to seeing much with his wide-range eyes. He was impressed—with a feeling that he should hurry his own transaction to save the flame lady any unnecessary impatience.
But the fatherly land clerk was addressing him.
"I should say, from the looks of you though, that you soon could remedy that marriage deficiency. There's nothing like trying. As a married man myself, I recommend the state, which needn't be what some call it—a condition of servitude for the male."
With a sense of bashful alarm, the sergeant saw him glance at the woman of marvelous hair. This became as near fright as he ever allowed himself to get when he realized that the unknown in the black riding togs must have heard and was finding difficulty in concealing beams of amusement. Childress, except for a prisoner or two who wore skirts, had enjoyed little experience with the sex he considered "dangerous." To him, romance was somewhere in the future—over the ridge ahead—after he had made good in the scarlet service to which he had committed so many of his active years—something perhaps to be snatched up, if he were lucky, just before the decline set in.
"The only woman I ever thought enough of to marry—" began Childress, and then stopped.