“I know this road,” piped Billy, on the box
“'I camped here with father when mother was off that time. You can take a left-hand trail by those cottonwoods and strike the mountains.”
So I inquired what game he had then shot.
“Ah, just a sage-hen. Lin's a-going to let me shoot a bear, you know. What made Lin marry mother when father was around?”
The driver gave me a look over Billy's head, and I gave him one; and I instructed Billy that people supposed his father was dead. I withheld that his mother gave herself out as Miss Peck in the days when Lin met her on Bear Creek.
The formidable nine-year-old pondered. “The geography says they used to have a lot of wives at Salt Lake City. Is there a place where a woman can have a lot of husbands?”
“It don't especially depend on the place,” remarked the driver to me.
“Because,” Billy went on, “Bert Taylor told me in recess that mother'd had a lot, and I told him he lied, and the other boys they laughed and I blacked Bert's eye on him, and I'd have blacked the others too, only Miss Wood came out. I wouldn't tell her what Bert said, and Bert wouldn't, and Sophy Armstrong told her. Bert's father found out, and he come round, and I thought he was a-going to lick me about the eye, and he licked Bert! Say, am I Lin's, honest?”
“No, Billy, you're not,” I said.
“Wish I was. They couldn't get me back to Laramie then; but, oh, bother! I'd not go for 'em! I'd like to see 'em try! Lin wouldn't leave me go. You ain't married, are you? No more is Lin now, I guess. A good many are, but I wouldn't want to. I don't think anything of 'em. I've seen mother take 'pothecary stuff on the sly. She's whaled me worse than Lin ever does. I guess he wouldn't want to be mother's husband again, and if he does,” said Billy, his voice suddenly vindictive, “I'll quit him and skip.”