“I have a hundred dollars with me,” faltered the woman, “and—and if I do not find the—the person I am looking for in Sun Dance, I shall have to use the money to take me to some other place. It would be hard for a woman to find herself without funds in this dreary country!”
“That’s so!” averred Lonesome Pete sympathetically.
“Pete, thar, is only gassin’,” struck in Hotchkiss, knocking the ashes from his pipe and slowly filling it again, “He’s tryin’ ter string the Easterner, mum, so don’t be in a takin’.”
“But my money!” murmured the woman. “I believe I will hide it, just to be on the safe side.”
“I’ve got a hundred dollars, too,” said Reginald de Bray. “When I get through looking around in Sun Dance, and travel back to Montegordo, there’ll be a draft there for me; but it would be mighty awkward to lose that hundred.”
The woman, taking a handkerchief from the bosom of her dress, had untied one corner and removed a roll of crumpled bills. For a few moments she sat thoughtfully, the bills in her hand. At last she lifted her hands, removed her hat—at the same time being very careful not to displace the veil that covered her face—and took the hat on her lap. The hat was covered with millinery folderols, none too new and all very dusty. In among the feathers and artificial flowers she stowed her hundred dollars, and Hotchkiss chuckled as he watched.
“Good place, mum,” averred Hotchkiss. “Purvidin’ thar was really goin’ ter be a hold-up, ye couldn’t find a better.”
“How would you like to put my money with yours, madam?” asked Reginald de Bray.
“I shall be glad to oblige you, sir,” answered the woman.
Hotchkiss glared at De Bray, and Lonesome Pete shifted disquietly. The woman had a soft, low voice, and it looked rather brutal for the tenderfoot to unload the responsibility of caring for his own money upon such a person.