“Where I come from it’s just the other way—too many petticoats and hat-pins.”
The horseman who was no horseman dropped Miss Carmichael’s hand and went into the house. Mary wondered if she ought to have been more cordial.
From the back door came Leander, with dishcloths, which he began to hang on the line in a dumb, driven sort of way.
“Who is she?” asked Mary.
“Her?” he interrogated, jerking his head in the direction of the house. “The postmistress, Judith Rodney; yes, that’s her name.” He dropped his voice in the manner of one imparting momentous things. “She never wears a skirt ridin’, any more than a man.”
Mary felt that she was tempting Leander into the paths of gossip, undoubtedly his besetting sin, but she could not resist the temptation to linger. He had disposed of his last dish-cloth, and he withdrew the remaining clothes-pin from his mouth in a way that was pathetically feminine.
“She keeps the post-office here, since Mrs. Dax lost the job, and boards with us; p’r’aps it’s because she is my wife’s successor in office, or p’a’ps it’s jest the natural grudge that wimmin seem to harbor agin each other, I dunno, but they don’t sandwich none.”
Leander having disposed of his last dish-towel, squinted at it through his half-closed eyes, like an artist “sighting” a landscape, saw apparently that it was in drawing, and next brought his vision to bear on the back premises of his own dwelling, where he saw there was no wifely figure in evidence.
“Sh-sh-h!” he said, creeping towards Mary, his dull face transfigured with the consciousness that he had news to tell. “Sh-sh—her brother’s a rustler. If ’twan’t for her”—Leander went through the grewsome pantomime of tying an imaginary rope round his neck and throwing it over the limb of an imaginary tree. “They’re goin’ to get him for shore this time, soon as he comes out of jail; but would you guess it from her bluff?”
There was no mistaking the fate of a rustler after Mr. Dax’s grisly demonstration, but of the quality of his calling Mary was as ignorant as before.