“I know. I owe him everything, Mrs. Porter. He—he had been awful good to my old daddy, they say. He saved my life, I think. But he said he was a horse-thief and ——”
“Y’betcha he did! Honest? Whooee, that ganglin’ outlaw sure was honest. If he’d ’a’ got killed in that entertainment they’d put up a monyment to him; but as it is I suppose some of these snake-hunters would kill him on sight.
“Human nature is kinda like that, Mary. Folks that pack a sawed-off shotgun for yuh when you’re alive, will chip in t’ give yuh a fancy tombstone and shed tears over yuh when you’re dead.
“Folks cuss me for wearin’ out their shirts on a old wash-board; but I’ll betcha if I died they’d all chip in and put me up a tombstone, real finicky, with a marble angel humped over a wash-tub, lookin’ at a marble shirt, and on it they’d engrave, ‘Not worn out, but —— near it.’”
Mary Leeds laughed at Mrs. Porter’s serious expression and dejected position over the wash-board as she held the dripping shirt in both hands and gazed at the ceiling.
“’F I go to heaven,” continued Mrs. Porter, “and they tell me that angels wear shirts, I’m sure goin’ to tell ’em that I know of a lot of preachers that have got the wrong dope on things down here.”
Mrs. Porter slapped the shirt back into the sudsy water and sank down in a broken-backed chair.
“Aw, I’m sick of it all, so I am. Scrub, scrub, scrub, all the time ’cept when I’m ridin’ sign on a —— flat-iron! Miners bring in their flannel shirts so danged dirty that yuh can’t wash ’em—yuh have t’ cultivate ’em. Their socks has been worn so long that I have t’ picket ’em out, ’stead of hangin’ ’em on the line.
“Feller brought me six suits of underclothes last week, and I let ’em fall off the table. Know what they done? Three suits broke all t’ ——, and the other three was so badly cracked that he made me pay for ’em. I tell yuh I’m sick of it. How in —— can I git refined under them conditions, I ask yuh?”
Mrs. Porter gathered up her apron in both hands and buried her face within its damp folds while her shoulders shook with suppressed emotion. Mary went to her quickly and threw both arms around her shoulder.