“Pardner,” said Porcupine as he looked wistfully at the broadcloth coat with satin revers and the tail sloped away like a grasshopper’s wings, “dey ain’t a friend you got, but me, dat would trust you to do their courtin’ for them togged out like dat—sure, dat’s so!”
There was a derisive glint in Laney’s small back eyes; he held the slow-witted Swede in almost open contempt for his innocence. Porcupine shook hands with him on the platform and wished him good luck. “You’ll do your best for me, pard?” he asked anxiously.
“Trust me,” replied Laney gaily, intoxicated by the attention he was receiving from the tourists in the Pullman car.
Porcupine stopped at Dashiel’s on his return. Belle Dashiel met him at the door and her eyes were blazing. Without being able to define the process of reasoning by which he arrived at the conclusion, Porcupine felt that his brilliant plot stood an infinitely better show of success that he did not find her in tears.
“Where’s he gone at?” She stamped her moccasined foot imperiously.
“I wouldn’t like to say,” replied Porcupine in a voice which denoted a wish to shield his partner and yet a noble, if unusual, desire to tell the truth.
“Tell me!” she commanded, and she put her small hand on the big Swede’s arm as though she would shake him.
“I tank,” answered Porcupine meekly; “I dunno, but I tank he’s gone to get married.”
As Laney sat in the day coach in his evening clothes, his broad hat tilted back from his coarse, swarthy face, a constant procession filed through the aisle and every eye rested upon his smiling and complacent countenance. He passed two restless nights sleeping with his head on his patent-leather valise, and monotonous days eating peanuts and slaking his thirst at the ice-tank in the corner of the car. The farther he got from home, the more attention he attracted, which was some recompense for the inconvenience he was enduring.
He had plenty of time to decide a question which had much perplexed him: Could he immediately address the lady as “Mayme” and kiss her upon sight, or should he call her Miss Livingston and merely shake her hand? If too demonstrative, he might frighten her—capital is shy, as all men know. On the other hand, women resent coldness—now there was Belle Dashiel. Something which, if developed, might have proved to be a conscience, gave him a twinge, and he hastened to put the half-breed girl from his thoughts.