“Yes,” sez Olaf, “just like about a waking person; and there is marks over a wound or a sick place.”
“Well, Mrs. Svenson,” sez Horace to Kit, “you’ll have to be mighty careful or your husband will find you out.”
“I am perfectly willin’,” sez Kit with a proud little smile. She was game, all right, Kit was.
“That is why I say it is all right,” sez Olaf. “She is young, she cannot know how she will change. If ever she no longer love me, I will not bother her. That would be a foolishness; but so long as she love me, no other man will bother her. That would be devilishness!”
“You certainly have a nice, simple scheme of life,” sez Horace. “If ever you change your mind, I’ll put up the money to take you back East, an’ pay you high wages.”
“No,” sez Olaf, “I hate circuses an’ shows, an’ such things. I not go.”
“You say you can tell sick places, an’ fear, an’ hate, an’ honesty,” sez Horace. “Now, when I came out here, I was just punk all over. You give me a look-over, an’ tell right out what you see.”
At first Olaf shook his head, but we finally coaxed him into it; an’ he opened his eyes wide an’ looked at Horace. As he looked the blue in his eyes got deeper an’ deeper, like the flowers on the benches in June, then when the pupil was plumb closed, the blue got lighter again, and he said: “You have not one sick point, you have good thoughts, you are very brave, you are too brave—you are reckless. You have very great vitality, an’ will live to be very old—unless you get killed. I knew an old Injun—over a hundred years old he was—he had a flame like yours. It is strange.”
You could actually see Horace swellin’ up with vanity at this; but it made ol’ Tank Williams hot to see such a fuss made about a small-caliber cuss; so he rumbles around in his throat a minute, an’ sez: “Well, you fellers can fool around all night havin’ your souls made light of, if ya want to; but as for me I’m goin’ to bed.”
Kit insisted that we sleep on the floor just as we had been, while she an’ Olaf bunked in the lean-to; but a warm chinook had been blowin’ all day, an’ it was soft an’ pleasant, so we took our beds out in the cottonwoods. Horace an’ the Friar got clinched into some kind of a discussion; but the rest of us dropped off about as soon as we stretched out. The moon was just risin’, an’ one sharp peak covered with glitterin’ snow stood up back o’ the rim. I remember thinkin’ it might be part o’ the old earth’s shiny soul.