Cockney started.
"She's my wife," he said, with a new dignity.
"I don't know what you was brung up to, but in this country we'd think that something to show, not just to talk about."
"Don't let me hear you talking about her," warned Cockney, "or anyone else," he added, raising his voice and looking over Dakota's shoulder to the cook-house.
He tossed the guns contemptuously at Dakota's feet and wheeled about. The cowboy muttered oaths at his retreating back, and rubbed the cords of his neck where the strain of the blow had come.
Mary Aikens had seen nothing of the incident—her eyes were too wet. With a dead weight at her heart she sank her head in her arms on the table and let the tears flow.
Cockney came on her that way and softly retreated, drawing the door gently behind him. After a few noisy crunches among the gravel and a preliminary kick to the outside step, he took a long breath and entered. She was darning then, her head held low. He passed quickly through to the bedroom door, but there he stopped, and, without turning, stood with his hand on the knob. Then he disappeared. Ten minutes later he reappeared in town attire.
In Cockney Aikens' ways were so many strange conventions that his friends had ceased to marvel at them. One of them was the formality of his dress for his visits to Medicine Hat. His boots were soft, light-soled, and natty, with drab cloth tops, like nothing ever seen on the prairie before; his socks silken, with white clocks. A delicate grey suit enclosed his huge frame in graceful lines that betrayed their Bond Street origin. His collar was a straight white upstanding affair with delicately rounded corners, and his cravat Irish poplin or barathea—always one of these silks, the former with a coloured diagonal stripe, the latter adorned with clusters of flowers. Above it all rested a light grey hat. From his breast pocket peeped the tips of chamois gloves, and on one little finger was a curious ring of triple cameos.
Mary Aikens always gasped when she saw him thus. It was thus she had learned to love him, thus he had turned the heads of half the girls of the northern United States towns from Seattle to Duluth. For Cockney Aikens wore his clothes as one accustomed to them. One suit he always kept in town at his tailor's, pressed and cleaned, changing at each visit.
His wife drew a sharp breath, forgetting that she was staring at him with uplifted hand. The evil temper had left his face with his leather chaps and neckerchief. He regarded her with an embarrassed twist to his face.