“I had a little trouble with my throat,” he explained depreciatively. “But this western air has just about put me in the running again. It’s wonderful.” I could see the thankfulness in his eyes, as he smiled up at his companion. I didn’t blame him for loving life.
In the smoking-car of the belated train we travelling men discussed the case of the painters.
“It’s only his throat that bothers him a bit,” I denied with some heat. “Besides, he is nearly recovered, and looks it.”
“Yes, I know; that’s characteristic. It’s what they all say when they begin to perk up in a change of climate,” persisted the Pessimist in the crowd. “But the average is 100 to 1 against them. I’ve seen too many lungers out here in this country.”
Damn a Pessimist with his statistics, anyhow!
· · · · · · ·
Several months later I made another trip through the Texas Panhandle country, and at each town going up from Quanah toward Amarillo I saw one of the Oakley lumber advertisements prominently displayed on large bill-boards. They were all the same, like the first one; that is, if your glance was but a passing one. But to me, who had grown interested in Art and things artistic, there was a difference in the paintings. Yes, a difference! I wasn’t so sure at first. “It’s just imagination,” I pooh-poohed the idea. But later on——
Anyhow, I soon found myself going directly from the station, on each arrival, to look up the Oakley bill-board. It was never hard to find. Somehow, I just got to wondering—worrying—about the welfare of the young husband, the artist, I had met.
In the first few of the paintings I found portrayed all the life and glad hope and expectancy that I had seen some time before in the one at Quanah.
Then came the inevitable. Strange as it was, I knew that I had been expecting—dreading—it; though rather in the gossip around the hotels than in the pictures themselves, where I really found it. That was the only surprise.