It was seven forty-five and I think she fancied it was midnight. If Jimsy had been six years old and a perfect fool to boot she could not have been more distracted than she presently became.
“Why, Mrs. Culloden,” I remonstrated, “Jimsy was raised in this valley. He knows his way about.”
She did not hear me and now she seized the telephone. Into the ears of one neighbor after another she poured questions up and down the valley. It was idle to remind her that Dead Timber Creek was five miles to the south of us and that the Whitlows, who lived six miles to the north, were not likely to have seen Jimsy. The whole valley quickly learned that he had not come back with his second load of wood by eight o’clock and that she was asking them all if they knew anything about it. In the space of twenty minutes with the telephone she had made him ridiculous throughout the precinct; and then at ten minutes past eight, while she was ringing up her friend Mrs. Sedlaw for the second time, in came Jimsy. The wood and the wagon were safe in the corral, he was safe in the house and hungry; and, of course, she hadn’t heard him arrive because of the noise of the telephone. He had been at the stable for the last ten minutes, attending to the horses.
“And you never had the sense to tell me!” she cried.
“Tell you what?” He had not taken it in. “Gosh, but that chicken looks good! What’s that lantern out there for?” He was now seated and helping himself to the food.
“And that’s all you’ve got to say to me!” she said. And then the deluge came—not of tears, but words.
Somewhere inside of Jimsy was an angel, whatever else he contained. Throughout that foolish, galling scene made in my presence before I could escape, never a syllable of what he must have been feeling came from him, but only good-natured ejaculations—not many and rather brief, to be sure. When he learned the reason for the lantern he laughed aloud. This set her off and she rushed into the story of her telephoning. Then, and then alone, it was on the verge of being too much for him. He laid down his knife and fork and leaned back for a second, but the angel won. He resumed his meal; only a brick-red sunset of color spread from his collar to his hair—and his eyes were not gray, but black.
That was what I saw after I had got away to my cabin and was in bed: the man’s black eyes fixed on his plate and the pretty girl standing by the stove and working off her needless fright in an unbearable harangue.
Audibly I sighed, sighed with audible relief, when the Culloden Ranch lay a mile behind Scipio and me and our packhorses the next day. Jimsy had been as self-controlled in the morning as on the night before—except that no man can control the color of his eyes. The murky storm that hung in Jimsy’s eyes was the kind that does not blow over, but breaks. Was May blind to such a sign? At breakfast she told him that the next time he went for wood she would go to see that he got back for supper! I told Scipio that if things were not different when we returned I should move over to his cabin.
“You’d never have figured a girl could get Jimsy buffaloed!” said Scipio.