“Thanks. Now listen.”
When the woman rode away a half hour later, carrying another of those letters from New York which the trader had come to hate ever since Selwood’s suggestion concerning the writer, his eyes had a very strange expression. It was a mixture of several expressions, rather—astonishment, of personal gratification, and a vague, incongruous regret. If he had been a better man that last faint seeming of sorrow might have denoted the loss of an ideal, the death of something fine.
But he looked after Cattle Kate with a fire of passion that was slowly growing with every interview.
Life at the homestead on Nameless took on a new color with the advent of Sonny Fair. Mrs. Allison, an epitome of universal motherhood, looked over the scant, well-mended belongings of the family and laid out such articles as she judged could be spared.
These she began expertly to make over into little garments.
“When did Brand buy you these pants, Sonny?” she inquired, but the child shook his head.
“I don’t know,” he answered.
“H’m. Must be pretty poor,” she opined, but Bud scowled in disapproval.
“Pretty durn stingy, I’d say,” he remarked.
“Hold judgment, Bud,” counseled Nance, “when a man travels for two years he don’t have much time to make money. We’re poor, too, but that don’t spell anything.”