I remember, in Clarendon—the first town after you get up on the Cap-rock of the Staked Plains—there I saw—or imagined—it first. One is ever instinctively wary of eyesight in that land of mirages.
And in each succeeding village and town as I travelled westward and upward, I felt it—saw it—there on the bill-boards, as if painted in half-unconsciously by the artist: a faint trace of querulous doubt in the face of the little, waiting wife, spirit of melancholia lying dull in the picture.
As I was getting out of Goodnight one afternoon—a little ahead of time—in the automobile that daily makes the round trip to Claude, we drove past the Oakley signboard. I was in a hurry to get on to Claude to see the trade before night, and be ready to leave for Amarillo the next morning. But forgetting all this at the sight of the picture on the bill-board, I asked the chauffeur to stop a minute before it.
She was still smiling, the little wife waiting there in front of their home for her husband’s return, but the smile was hollow and lifeless. I knew—could see—she was full of uneasiness and dread, and was only smiling to keep up her courage.
“That’s quite a lumber advertisement—there,” I ventured. The chauffeur was drinking water from the canvas canteen.
“Uh-huh!” he gulped. “I seen ’em painting it.”
“A man and woman?”
“Well, yes; but the woman did most of it. I saw her there every day for some time. Once in a while the man—her husband, I guess—would be tryin’ to help paint, but he was all in. You could tell it, the way he looked.”
I winced at his words. So here it was, confirmed, what I had been hoping was only imagination. Confound that Pessimist!
“They must have painted a good many of these signs; I see them everywhere,” I continued, in a disinterested manner.