Miss Brackett sat erect. A look of elation burned in her violet eyes.
Elsie drew a deep breath and laughed.
'Yes. I didn’t like the idea at first: all the rough clothes, and our being alone on the plains, and after a while going to be right in the desert—it seemed to me terrible. But it was the only thing there was for me to do. I just kep' my mouth shut tight through all that time. And then, I don’t know, more and more, oh, I just come to love it!'
After a moment Elsie said, 'And did you really have any hardships?'
'What do you call hardship? The rainy reason was bad. But I’ve been lots wetter longer at a time, through whole winters, when I’d lend my rubbers to the children. Sometimes it was terrible cold. But then we always had a good fire. I’ve been lots colder in the back parlor and on crowded street-car platforms, and lots and lots more uncomfortable. Once we got off the trail. Once we had a bad time about finding water. One night, after the mules was hobbled they jumped along so far, even hobbled, that we couldn’t get them for hours. Kip and Will Bronson was gone six hours in different directions; and I was afraid they was lost. But I’ve had more hardship, you might say, and not that I want to complain either, in one week on the West Side at home, than in a whole year of what they called roughing it. And for hard feelings, and real mean bad ways of acting, I’ve seen more of them over getting out one shirt-waist in a dressmaker’s shop, than in that whole time on the wagon-trip. Even though once we had a man in our camp that we heard afterwards was a criminal and fugitive from justice,' she added with a laugh.
'What sort of a man was he?'
'A very considerate, pleasant sort of man. He was a short, thick-set fellow from Missouri, with a hard sort of chin. He come riding up near the Baton Pass, and asked to stay the night and get supper and breakfast with us. Well, it so happened I had caught cold and wasn’t feeling extra. The boys was worried and sort of mad,—that was the worst trouble we had,—because I would mend and cook just the same. The boys cooked terrible, and it seemed as though I couldn’t have no peace of mind, unless I did it. It made me feel so as though I was no use to them and not paying my share by what I did, you know. Well, this man from Missouri was a fine cook. He stayed with us three days, and by the time he went I was all right again. He was real helpful. They never got him. When we come to Trinidad, we was good and surprised to find he was a cattle thief that shot a sheriff that tried to arrest him.'
The lake was paler now. White clouds plumed on the horizon, and an evening glow, green and faintly flushing, was reflected delicately from the west. The dunes were browner and darker. The visitor sat thinking, evidently, of her long, free wandering days. Elsie, putting on her shoes, sat thinking of her wayfaring companion’s mean and hateful life in the very midst of what is called civilization and respectability; of her struggle for existence—a struggle in which she had been all but killed by the greedinesses around her; a struggle just as sharp as any of the nail-and-claw-depredations commonly attributed exclusively to wilder-nesses. They watched the sky change, in an unspoken friendliness.
'And now, you are much better?' said Elsie quietly.
'Yes. Now I’m well, thank God! And the Bronson boy as sound as a bell. That was the most lucky illness you can imagine for me. I couldn’t go back after that to the way I lived before. I always would live different—more outdoors, and just looking after myself better. Since that time, I’ve been lots more use to myself and everybody else. After we got to California, I sewed here and there for the people where we boarded first, and they liked my sewing so much, and I made so much money, that when Kip got a job to Gary, engineering for the electric plant, and I come too, to keep house for him, I put up a sign and gradually I’d worked up a good trade, before he was married. Why I’m going to be able to send Babe to Vassar, and plenty for me to take a trip west, too, next summer. Kip married such a nice girl.' She rose. 'I’ve talked you to death. But when you spoke about your cousin, it brought everything right out of my lips some way. I hope he’s not so very sick.'